| Language learning is influenced by many factors including intelligence factors, affective factors, environmental factors and so on. With the deepening of the research, the perspective of SLA research has changed from outside into inside. Researchers began to attach importance to the corelation between affective factors and language learning and they put forward lots of theories, among which the Affective Filter Hypothesis is the most famous. It is proposed by Krashen and has become the most influential one since seventies and eighties of20th century. The Affective Filter Hypothesis holds the view that language input is affected by learners’affection which have big influence on language learning. Thereafter, many researchers and teachers have done investigations on different aspects of affective factors. Including Gardner (1976), Philips (1982), Clement (1987), Yang Lihong (2005), Tin Jing(2012) and so on. But few of them are concerning Junior High School students’English learning. Thus, this paper will study the current affective factors of Junior High School students when learning English, analyzing the correlation between affective factors and English test scores based on the Affective Filter Hypothesis.In this paper, the writer mainly focuses on motivation, anxiety, and personality. Firstly, the writer sent questionnaires to230third-year students from a Junior High School, collected the data and analyzed the current affective situations of the students; then the writer gathered the scores of their monthly examination in April,2013and analyzed the correlation between each affective factor and the test score. At last, the author carried on interviews with20students and analyzed the result in order to supplement the quantitative researches.The research results show:most of the students have external motivations. External motivations are mainly about examination, going abroad and communication. Internal motivation is concerning personal interests. According to the research, both external and internal motivations and the English test score are in positive correlation. But internal motivation is more closely related to the test score. Among the subjects, most of them are experiencing anxiety. Communication anxiety comes first and then the fear of negative evaluation. There are many reasons for anxiety including low-level of language competence, lacking confidence, teacher’s negative evaluation, inappropriate classroom activities and so on. Anxiety and test score is in significantly negative correlation. In addition, there are more introverted students than extroverted students. Personality types and test score are in insignificant correlation.Based on research findings, the writer finally puts forward some suggestion for English teaching:in order to strength students’internal motivation, we can adopt interesting classroom activities, set moderate homework, create relaxed and enjoyable learning atmosphere and so on; as for reducing anxiety, we can help students build self-confidence, help they improve language ability, adopt group work or something like that and so on. |
