A Survey Study On Affordance Of English Learning Environment In High School From Ecological Perspective

Learning environment plays a vital role in students’ English learning.General Senior High School English Curriculum Standards(2020 revision)states that “ Teachers should create the best learning environment for students to present themselves,challenge themselves,go beyond themselves and learn from each other.” However,English learning environment in high school is not optimistic.Thus,this study aims to investigate the current situation of high school English learning environment from an ecological perspective.Also,this study is to explore the impacts of English learning environment affordance on high school students ’English learning and its affecting factors,thereby providing some pedagogical suggestions.The theoretical foundations consist of relevant theories of learning environment in SLA,Affordance Theory and Educational Ecology Theory.Relevant theories of learning environment in SLA discuss the relationship between learning environment and second language acquisition from different perspectives.Affordance Theory explores the framework of affordance in the learning environment from macro and micro levels.Educational Ecological Theory focuses on the ecological harmony among teachers,students and learning environment.The research intends to answer the following three questions:(1)What is the current situation of English learning environment affordance in high school?(2)In the high school English learning environment,which affordance is in line with the requirements of affordance from an ecological perspective? Which affordance fails to reach the requirements? How do these affordances affect students’ English learning?(3)What factors affect the affordance of English learning environment in high school?200 Grade 2 students and 200 Grade 2 English teachers from high school in Yushu City,Jilin province participated in the study.The questionnaire,interview and narrative story were used as research instruments.The questionnaire data were analyzed quantitatively by SPSS23.0 software.The interview transcripts and narrative story texts were collected for qualitative analysis.It was found in the study that,firstly,high school English learning environment mainly provides students with cognitive affordance,perceptual affordance,physical affordance,technical affordance,educational affordance and social affordance.But different affordance functions differently and they respectively reach different level.Physical affordance and educational affordance support students’ English learning at the greatest extend,followed by cognitive affordance and perceptual affordance;technical affordance and social affordance are still insufficient.Secondly,perceptual affordance,physical affordance and educational affordance basically meet the environment affordance requirements from an ecological perspective.These affordance helps to improve students’ learning enthusiasm,materially meet students’ needs,and make high school English education into reality.However,cognitive affordance,technical affordance and social affordance fail to reach the ecological requirements.They makes students form a utilitarian learning motivation,technically limits students’ knowledge and hinders students’ socialization.Thirdly,the needs of students’ English learning,the intervention of English teachers and the investment of school on infrastructure construction mainly affect high school English learning environment affordance.This study would give some implications for studies on high school English learning environment affordance.