Vocational English Teaching Emotional Factors

Affect which is one of the key factors in English teaching and learning has beenhighly concerned and widely researched by both linguists and language teachers. Thestudy is set in the great development of vocational education and English curriculumreform. 300 students in Wuxi Industrial School and 35 English teachers from threedifferent vocational schools in Wuxi participate the questionnaire survey andinterview. Correlation analysis, T-test and descriptive statistics analysis of SPSS11.0are applied to analyze the relative data. Six affective factors (anxiety, inhibition,self-esteem, classroom transaction, risk-taking and the tolerance to ambiguity) whichare supposed to influence English teaching and learning in vocational schools arediscussed and researched with the help of quantitative and qualitative analysis. Thestudy tries to answer the following three questions: 1) What is the correlation betweensix affective factors and the English achievement of the students in vocational schools?2) Is there any affective difference between good English learners and poor learnerswho will take part in the entrance examination and those who needn't do that? 3) Howdo English teachers in vocational schools apply affective strategies to their teaching?The result of the research shows that: a) Self-esteem is the most important factorinfluencing students' English achievement. What follows is anxiety and classroomtransaction. The degree of students' anxiety in vocational schools is not too high buttoo low. b) There is significant difference in self-esteem and anxiety between goodEnglish learners and poor English learners from the class who need to take entranceexamination while there exists significant difference not only in self-esteem andanxiety but also in classroom transaction between good English learners and poorEnglish learners from the class who don't have to take entrance examination. Theeffect of classroom transaction on students who needn't take entrance exam is greaterthan those who have to. c) More than half of the English teachers in vocationalschools have already realized the importance of affective factors in English teaching.However, the degree is not enough. Few teachers really consider applying affectivestrategies to their teaching. Most of the teachers in vocational schools often relate affective factors with their teaching and seldom focus attention on the students' learning. Based on the above research findings, the author of this thesis makes the following suggestions: 1) English teachers in vocational schools are badly in need of the guide of theory. 2) Students' self-esteem should be protected at any cost in the classroom teaching. 3) Students in vocational schools had better maintain moderate anxiety. It is also suggested that the teacher should not depend too much on the single teaching method of explanation, and students should be really regarded as the master of the class and teacher should manage to help students to form stable affective attitude towards English learning and to develop their quality of perseverance and hard work.