A Study Of The Transition Period English Teaching From Junior Middle School To Senior High School From The Perspective Of Affective Teaching

Affective education is an important facet of quality education. Cultivating students’communicative competence and positive attitudes towards English are the ultimate objectivesof English teaching. In the past years, thanks to the advocation of fostering students’ positiveaffect towards English learning, the phenomenon that students’ cognition overweighs theiraffective states has changed a lot. However, under the influence of test-oriented educationsystem, many English teachers still accentuate the teaching of English cognition and skill inhigh school English teaching. In English class, teachers are talking eloquently about theirlanguage points, while students are passively busy with taking notes. Students’ initiative andenthusiasm have been restrained, so their positive affect towards English learning are hardlyformed. As a result, students lose interest and confidence towards English learning, and manyof them even give up learning English.The first year of senior high school is the transition period from junior to senior. Studentsin this period regard grade one as a new start. Most of them cherish the hope that they willachieve success in the college entrance examination through three years’ hard study. Thecourses in senior draw higher demands for senior students. Besides, senior students,especially students in senior one, are in the point from juvenile period to the adolescent period,which is also regarded as a period with great antagonistic psychology. Their self-assessmentand self-awareness have developed a lot, and their self-personality and values have beeninitially shaped. Also, compared with past, students’ affect in this period becomes richer,stronger and more unstable.How to smoothly go through this transition period is a headache challenging all thestudents and teachers in grade one of senior high schools every year. English is one of the main subjects in senior high schools, so helping students smoothly go through this transitionperiod is a critical issue. It can promote English teaching quality if the issue is properlytackled, otherwise, it may lead to the polarization of students’ English learning, and thus itmay seriously impact the overall English teaching quality in senior. Therefore, the research onhow to exert affective teaching in the transition period from junior middle school to seniorhigh school is of great practical significance in cultivating students’ positive affect andpromoting the learning of English and even other subjects.Through the investigation, the author has found that most of the researches on affectiveteaching have focused on affective English teaching in primary school level, senior highschool level or college level. There are few researches on the transition period from juniormiddle school to senior high school English teaching.Students of senior one from Wu Gang Experimental high school in Ping Dingshan,Henan province are chosen as the subjects. The research methods include questionnaire,interview and teaching experiment, etc. By analyzing affective factors, this thesis tries to bondteaching with affect and to find out some meaningful teaching implications so as to fosterstudents’ positive affect and improve their English learning in this period.The study tries to answer the following questions:（1）What are the status quo of students’affective states in English learning in transitionperiod?（2）What are the factors that influence students’ English learning in the transitionperiod?（3）Whether affective teaching can effectively promote students’learning capability andlearning efficiency in transition period?This research is empirical study. The research is carried out in the following steps. The first step is pre-test. The test was handed out to the112students all of whom camefrom the experimental class and the control class, with the purpose of obtaining a generalview of senior one students’ English level and provide reference and data for affectiveteaching experiment.Then, inspired by Krashen’ s Affective Filter Hypothesis, the author analyzes the majoraffective factors that influence students’ English learning in transition period throughquestionnaire and interview. Besides, the author also proposes the corresponding affectiveteaching strategies to implement the teaching experiment.The third step is teaching experiment, which lasts12weeks. In the experimental class,systematic affective teaching was employed to foster student’s capability of handling affectivefactors and to increase the communication between teacher and students in and after class,while the students in control class had the normal English teaching.Last, the software SPSS was used to make comparison between tests scores of EC andCC before and after experiment. The purpose is to examine the effectiveness of affectiveEnglish teaching.The main findings are as follows:(1) Students almost encounter adaptive problem in transition period. They encounterpessimistic emotional experience in motivation, interest, self-esteem and anxiety. Besides,their poor self-regulation of affective states in a short of time influences their English learningefficiency.(2) Affective English teaching in transition period can effectively promote students’English learning capability and learning efficiency.Based on the result of the analysis of affective English teaching in transition period, theauthor puts forward the following teaching suggestions in transition period: First, teachersshould pay attention to cultivating students’ motivation and positive attitude towards English learning. Second, teachers should pay attention to heightening students’ self-esteem in Englishlearning. Third, teachers should pay attention to relieving students’ anxiety in Englishlearning.