A Study On Affective Factors In Middle School Students' English Learning

In recent years,language learners' individual differences have gained more and more concerns from language researchers and teachers.As one of the factors of individual differences,affective factors begin to gain much attention.The emphasis on affective factors has played a significant role in language learning,which can improve students' learning efficiency and quality of learning.At the same time,the emphasis on affective factors is also an important aspect to students' comprehensive development.However,the current middle-school English teaching seriously neglects the affective education,ignoring the students' affective needs,which all in all hinders English learning.Therefore,teachers should have an in-depth understanding of middle-school students' affective state and further take effective measures to develop students' positive affects,which can help students learn English more actively,effectively.Three important effective factors,namely,motivation,anxiety and personality are studied in this thesis.On the basis of The Affective Filter Hypothesis theory,the author firstly distributed a questionnaire to totally 100 grade eight students from Liang Daojie middle school.The questionnaire is used to collect data for analysis,and to research students' current affective state.At the same time,from the end of March 2016 to the end of June 2016,the author carried out an affective teaching experiment to two classes she taught.One serves as experimental class,the other serves as control class.The scores of pre-test and post-test are collected in the end of March,2016 and in the beginning of July,2016 respectively.All the experimental and questionnaire data was analyzed through SPSS(19.0)statistical analysis software.Finally,as a complement to the quantitative research,the author randomly chose 20 students,and they were interviewed by the author.The results of the interviews were also analyzed.The findings show that the majority of students have obvious motivation,their intrinsic motivation focused on English learning as well as culture and customs of English-speaking countries.Extrinsic motivation is manifested in further learning or future employment.However,the survey also found that,in the current middle schoolEnglish teaching,there are a considerable number of students who have learning anxiety problems,particularly including communication anxiety and classroom anxiety.For personality,the outcomes differ from different situations.For the above affective problems,the author carries out an affective teaching experiment,which lasts for over three months.The measures taken are as follows: stimulating students' motivation,lowering excessive anxiety,and helping students develop positive affects towards English learning.The results showed that students in the experimental class have made tremendous progress.And their academic achievement is significantly better than those of the control class.Therefore,English teachers should fully emphasize on middle-school students' affective factors and realize the importance of affective teaching in which teachers can stimulate middle-school students' motivation,develop their positive affects and reduce their anxiety,which are all essential to their English learning.