The Influence Of Affect In Educational Contexts

Affective factors, theoretically based on humanistic psychology, are of great importance in the foreign language teaching and learning; however, they are always ignored by the foreign language teachers and researchers compared with the cognitive factors based on cognitive psychology. As far as the foreign language teaching is concerned, the listening skills in particular, more studies were conducted in the fields of psycholinguistic, cognitive linguistic and second language acquisition, while the affective factors were less touched. Meanwhile, the traditional listening setting not only nails the listening facilities but also separates the teacher from the students; the teacher acts just as an operator in the lab; students listen mechanically--- which ignores the affect of the learners greatly.Affective factors, however, influenced in a large degree the cognitive considerations such as perception, comprehension, memory and so on. Ernest Hilgard, well known for his study of human learning and cognition, once noted"purely cognitive theories of learning will be rejected unless a role is assigned to affectivity"(quoted in Brown, 2001:134). In the listening classroom, such factors as attitude, motivation, anxiety, self-esteem, empathy and fatigue impact the listening effect considerably.Theoretically based on humanistic approach, this thesis aims at the research on the relationship between affect and listening teaching and learning, especially explores affective factors such as motivation, anxiety, and self-esteem, etc. by conducting a qualitative and quantitative research.By presenting some personal teaching experience and valuable suggestions, the writer hopes that the thesis will provide some guidance on teaching listening effectively by debilitating negative affective factors and increasing positive ones to optimize teaching and learning effect.