A Study Of Senior High School Students’ Academic Emotions

As an activity that promotes the development of cognition and thinking model,foreign language learning stimulates learners to experience different academic emotions,mutually,learners’ emotions interact with cognition to function together to impact learners’ learning.Senior high students are in a critical period of cognitive and thinking development,they perceive complex academic emotions in English learning.However,in China,foreign language teaching attracts great importance on language knowledge and language skills,ignoring the importance of academic emotions.In fact,as one of the nonintelligence factors,academic emotions impact not only the learning process but also students’ psychological and physical development.Therefore,in order to explore senior high school students’ academic emotions under the new round education reform,this study is conducted to answer the following questions:(1)what is the status quo of senior high school students’ academic emotions in English learning?(2)How senior high school students regulate academic emotions generating in English learning?(3)What factors contribute to senior high school students’ academic emotions?To answer the three questions,questionnaire and semi-structure interview are adopted as the research methods and 279 senior high school students are as research subjects.The questionnaire comprises four dimensions,namely positive activating academic emotions,positive activating academic emotions,negative activating academic emotions and negative deactivating academic emotions.By analyzing the collected data from questionnaire,the overall situation of senior high school students’ English academic emotions can be understood.Based on Gross’ s process model of emotion regulation,the collected data from semi-interview are analyzed to summarize the emotion regulation strategies and according to Pekrun’ control-value theory,both individual and social factors that influence academic emotions are analyzed.Based on both quantitative and qualitative date,research findings show that:(1)the perception of senior high school students’ English academic emotions is in a medium level;Senior high school students perceive a higher level of positive academic emotions than negative one in English learning;and among 12 kinds of academic emotions,the perception levels from high to low are pride,enjoyment,hope,peace,relaxation,nervous,anxiety,depression,shame,hopelessness,anger and boredom;As for academic emotions in different group,there is significant gender difference,that is females perceive a higher level of positive academic emotion than males;and there is insignificant grade difference except the academic emotions anxiety,nervous and boredom.(2)In English learning,senior high school students use attentional deployment,cognitive change,relaxation,help-seeking others,working hard and taking deep breathing to regulate academic emotions.(3)As for the influencing factors,achievement goal,attribute styles,selfefficacy,instruction,task,teacher’s autonomy support,expectation from teachers and parents as well as teacher’s feedback contribute to senior high school students’ academic emotions.Based on the findings,this study puts forward some feasible suggestions from two aspects,students and teachers.For students:(1)regulating academic emotions in appropriate ways;(2)setting appropriate achievement goal;(3)forming positive attribution styles;For teachers:(1)creating harmonious classroom environment;(2)designing appropriate learning tasks;(3)giving students autonomy support;(4)giving timely and positive feedback.The limitations of this study are: the research subjective are small and not process the characteristic of representative;academic emotions regulation strategies mostly involve the negative academic emotions,but seldom are concerned about how to upregulate positive academic emotions.