The Investigation Of Affective Factors In Senior High School English Teaching

In recent years, with the booming development of China’s English education,great achievements have been made in the middle school English teaching. More andmore teachers begin to pay great attention to the influence of emotional factors.However, as a result of the long-term exam-oriented educational system, someEnglish teachers pay more attention to the cognitive factors and ignore the affectivefactors, and there are also some other teachers who have realized the importance ofaffective factors but they don’t know how to use the related strategies in theclassroom effectively. All this may have a negative influence on students’ Englishlearning and cause some negative results such as anxiety or lack of confidence.Foreign language education in senior high school is an important process toimprove students’ foreign language quality. It is to meet not only the requirements ofhigh school graduates’ employment and further education, but also meet the students’mental and emotional development. An important aspect of our education reform is topay attention to the development of students’ emotional attitude and to cultivatestudents’ emotional attitude in English teaching. The new English CurriculumStandards also requests not only to improve students’knowledge and skills but also topay attention to students’ positive affects and attitudes such as self-esteem,self-confidence and motivation. After entering high school, the students’ learningtasks are so difficult that they have more pressure in their studies than before. In thiscase, we have higher requirements for teachers, and teachers in senior high schoolsshould design affective strategies as well as cognitive strategies in order to inspirestudents’interest in English study and help them keep motivation in study. Also, it canhelp students establish self-confidence and increase their strong will to overcomedifficulties. Teacher should also organize different activities to cultivate students’team spirit and develop their creativity. And students can express their emotions,attitudes and values.Centering on the problem that teachers focus more on cognitive factors and ignore affective factors, and based on humanism learning theory，construction principlelearning theory, and a large number of references, this thesis, by using such methodsas questionnaires and classroom observation, makes a survey of affective education inhigh school English classrooms. The author analyzes the use of affective factors inhigh school English classrooms from these aspects such as teachers’ understanding ofthe emotional target, teachers’ recognition of the importance of emotional factors,emotional processing of the teaching material and the relationship between teachersand students. Through the analysis of the data, the author finds that most of theteachers have realized the importance of affective factors. They can design affectiveobjectives and keep good relationship with students in English teaching. However,there are still some teachers who think the affective factors cannot help to improve theteaching effect. Others have difficulty in using affective factors properly though theyhave realized the importance of those factors, for they are lacking in maturetechniques. For example, these teachers design fewer activities in the classroom, haveless communication with students and take fewer steps to foster students’ positiveemotional factors such as confidence and interest. Through further analysis, the authorfinds out that old teachers are good at using emotional factors compared with newteachers. News teachers have difficulty in achieving affective objectives and usingaffective factors in the classroom. Their way of interaction with students is simple.According to the analysis, some suggestions are put forward to help teachers to useaffective factors properly and improve students’ interest in learning. For example, theteacher should change their traditional role and teaching methods, the teacher shouldpay attention to the design of the emotional teaching goals, and conduct teachingprocess in various ways, the teacher should use affective factors in teaching and createpositive learning environment. Also the teacher should promote students’self-confidence and build harmonious relationship with students.