A Study On Lowering The Weak Students' Affective Filter In English Learning In Middle School

The issue of weak students is very common in English teaching and learning and it has remained a big challenge for many English teachers, especially those at rural senior high schools. Scholars and experts have been trying to address this problem from different perspectives and a lot of significant results have been obtained. However, while the current studies attribute the problem mainly to the cognitive factors in language learning, the affective factors have not received sufficient attention. Studies have indicated affective filter, which mainly includes self-confidence, motivation and anxiety in language learning, plays a very important role in students'English learning and there is a negative correlation between affective filter and learning. The higher the affective filter, the poorer the learning effect, and vice versa. Therefore, this thesis chooses the perspective of affective factors to explore the causes of the learning difficulties and the effective ways to lower the weak students'affective filter. It is hoped that in this way the weak students in middle school can be fundamentally stimulated and motivated to learn English with lower anxiety and higher interest.Based upon Krashen's Affective Filter Hypothesis and Pygmalion Effect, the researcher did a four-month teaching experiment which included questionnaire, observation and individual interview at Luonan Middle School in Shaanxi Province. Throughout the whole teaching process, she put forward some effective methods to help the weak students to lower their affective filter from different aspects.This paper consists of five parts. Introduction presents the background, purpose and significance of this study. The second part reviews the current study and the related theories on weak students. Then comes the major part of this paper which presents the research design and the process of the experiment. On the basis of the experiment, the author analyzes and discusses the results. Finally the author draws a conclusion.Through the research and experiment, this study proves that lowering the affective filter of the weak students in English learning at Senior High School from the affective perspective is of great importance and with their lowered affective filter, a vital step for the complete transformation, their academic achievement can be improved.