论文总字数：38749字

摘 要

长期以来，我国的英语教学受传统教学模式以及应试教育的影响，教师只关注学生的认知发展，而忽视对其情感状态的关注，以致出现了“情感空白”（emotional illiteracy）。随着《新课程标准》的颁布，这种状况有所改变。情感目标被认为是英语教学中最重要的目标之一。本文从英语教学现状出发，就如何有效运用情感策略作出研究。首先，要充分激发学生积极情感；其次，要提高教师的素养并充分发掘教材中的情感因素；最后，要建立融洽的师生关系。因此，作为英语老师，在教学中应该更加关注学生的情感状态，运用情感策略来促进学生的英语学习。

关键词：情感；英语教学；情感策略

Contents

1. Introduction 1

1.1 Stimulus of the Research 1

1.2 Purpose of the Research 1

1.3 Structure of the Research 2

2. Literature Review 2

2.1 The Definition of Related Concepts 2

2.2 The Scope of Affective Factors 4

2.3 The Theoretical Framework 6

3. Problems and Necessity of Affective Teaching 7

3.1 Problems of Affective Teaching 7

3.2 Necessity of Affective Teaching 8

4. The Application of Affective Strategies in English Teaching 8

4.1 Development on Students’ Positive Affection 8

4.2 Improvement on Teachers’ Affective Cultivation 12

4.3 Exploration on the affective Factors in Teaching Materials 13

4.4 Establishment on Harmonious Relationship with Students 15

5. Conclusion 16

Works Cited 18

1. Introduction

1.1 Stimulus of the Research

For a long time, China has been implementing educational reforms to promote the development of Chinese education, and affective education is one of the major initiatives. In the traditional teaching mode, influenced by exam-oriented education, teachers usually pay excessive attention to students’ cognitive development while ignore emotional development. A large number of educational workers excessively stress brain’s rationality and cognitive function and neglect the development of non-rational aspects, resulting in “emotional illiteracy”.

However, in 2001, the Ministry of Education issued the English Curriculum Standards which regarded “emotional attitude” as one of the objectives of the basic English education course, and pointed out that we should change the examination-oriented education, comprehensively promote quality education, cultivate students’ comprehensive quality and develop students’ knowledge, emotion, behavior and other aspects. Since then, some teachers have begun to focus on the role of emotions in teaching. However, in the actual English teaching, there still exist kinds of problems in the application of affective strategies. This paper will probe into the current situation of emotional education and how to use affective strategies to promote English teaching.

1.2 Purpose of the Research

In the full implementation of quality education, if we want to promote the English teaching and students’ overall sustainable development better, we must give full attention to the development of the various factors that influence the students, especially the emotional factors. H. H. Stern, a famous English educator, once said, “Emotions’ roles in language learning are at least as important as cognitive skills, even more important. Affective factors can not only promote students’ cognitive development, potential exploration and moral cultivation but also benefit students’ development of socialization and aesthetic conception. The paper aims at exploring the status and role of affective education in junior high school English education, and proposing some effective emotional strategies to promote the development of English teaching.

1.3 Structure of the Research

The paper is made up of five parts.

Chapter one serves as introduction, which contains stimulus, purpose and structure of the research.

Chapter two is the literature review. After an introduction of affective education in China, the definition of related concepts, such as affection, affective education and affective strategy, will be discussed carefully. Then there is a general introduction to affective factors, including motivation, interest, attitude and anxiety. In addition, this part also includes the theoretical framework.

Chapter three provides some existing problems of application of affective teaching and the reasons why we should employ affective strategy.

Chapter four is the most important part offering some specific affective strategies to improve English teaching and learning in junior high school.

Chapter five comes to a conclusion of the thesis.

2. Literature Review

Affective teaching mode is formed on the basis of the following educational psychology theories：Affective Filter Hypothesis，Multiple Intelligence Theory and Humanism Psychology．Here are some correlative factors and theoretical framework mentioned below．

2.1 The Definition of Related Concepts

2.1.1 Affection

What is affection? On the basic sense, affections are people’s different attitudes and experiences when they are in response to various things in the real world. When people cognize the objective facts and phenomena, they always have a certain attitude, like or dislike, reverence or contempt. Affection, as a personal inner experience, is a relatively stable attitude to people and things.

Affection comes from needs. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory divides human needs into seven different levels. Once there is something meeting people’s needs, people will have a satisfactory experience that will make people feel happy and will provoke people’s interest in learning, and eventually enhance learning capability. On the contrary, people will feel depressed, frustrated, and not interested in learning, which will have a negative impact on learning.

Yan Guocai, a Chinese psychologist, is of the opinion that the so-called affection is the fluctuation and infection of people’s awareness to a certain object. Fluctuation and infection are the two basic features of emotion.（Yan Guocai, 2001: 35）When people’s mental activity is affected by an external thing, two states will appear. The first one is calm state, namely intellect; the other is fluctuant state, which is emotion.

2.1.2 Affective Teaching

About what is affective teaching, there is not an explicit conclusion. Scholars make different statements from different perspectives. Yu Xia, an educational scholar, points out in her book Affective Education, that affective teaching is an integral part of a complete education process. It can develop students’ affective self-control capacity, promote their positive attitude towards learning, life and surroundings, form an independent personality and character, and eventually enable everyone who receives an education to develop morally, intellectually and physically and become a worker possessed of both socialist consciousness and a general education.（Yu Xia, 1999: 6）

Professor Lu Jiamei define the affective teaching as an approach that educators take full account of cognitive factors and affective factors’ positive role to improve the teaching goals and enhance teaching effect in the teaching process.（Lu Jiamei, 2000: 2）

Some scholars believe that the so-called affective teaching is a process in which, teachers, basing on certain requirements, stimulate students to produce positive changes in the affective realm to arouse their interests in a certain subject and to grasp scientific knowledge.

2.1.3 Affective Strategy

Learning strategies are strategies which contribute to the development of language system which the learner constructs and affect learning directly”. (Rubin 1987:22)

Affective strategy is a kind of learning strategy that learners build up a harmonious, democratic and equal environment to promote learning efficiency by regulating and monitoring their own motivations, interests, attitudes and confidence to adapt to different learning contexts. About the elements of affective strategy, Oxford, O’M alley, Stern and Krashen have their own opinions. Generally speaking, affective strategy has the following main factors: power source (interest, motivation), self-efficacy, cooperation and anxiety. In the affective strategy system, power is a source of emotional excitation; cooperation is the way to run affective strategy; self-efficacy affect the nature and tension of affection by controlling the thinking, actions and emotions.（Guo Benyu, 2003: 20-21）

2.2 The Scope of Affective Factors

2.2.1 Motivation

Linguist Jeremy Harmer defined motivation as the internal driving force to encourage one to a particular goal. If we want to achieve a goal with a great attraction, we will strain every nerve to achieve this goal. (Li Yang, 2010: 49)

Theo van Els believes that motivation is one of the most important factors affecting learning success and that it not only can accelerate the success, but also can enhance learner’s internal force in turn. As middle school students, the aim of learning foreign language usually has two kinds. One is to cope with the examination and enrollment; the other is the interest for English. No matter what kind of motivation they hold, students will have an internal power to learn English which is one of the important factors influencing students learning. Therefore, once students who are interested in English would show a quite strong desire for learning foreign languages and the learning effect is particularly great.

The research shows that middle school students with a strong motivation will have a higher learning level while those with a weak motivation will have a relatively low learning level. Teachers should try to improve students’ learning motivation, so as to improve students’ English learning level.

2.2.2 Interest

Interest is the psychological tendency that one seeks to understand certain things or engage in certain activities. Learning interest is a kind of cognitive tendency based on their learning needs. This tendency is always accompanied by good affective experience. Interest is the best teacher and a strong motivation to learn English. With a strong interest in English learning, students will learn foreign language with whole heart and relish. Once achieving the success or making some achievements, the students will get great satisfaction from learning English and experience the learning pleasure, so as to promote the deepening interest in learning and enrichment. Therefore, the learning interest is the most realistic and the most active component of learning affection. It makes the boring language learning activities become active, cheerful, resulting in great learning effect.

2.2.3 Attitude

Foreign language learning attitude is the learner’s cognitive, emotional, effective, behavioral tendency in foreign language learning. The learner’s attitude will directly affect the learning behavior and the learning effect.

A positive learning attitude can promote English learning level while the negative one will restrain the improvement of English level. (Liu Junshuan, 2006: 67-69) High school students learning attitudes are usually based on the interest. If they like English, they will be actively involved in the classroom activities. Therefore, teachers should take action to mobilize students’ enthusiasm, so as to change the students’ attitudes towards English learning.

2.2.4 Anxiety

Language anxiety is fear or apprehension occurring when a learner is expected to perform in the second of foreign language (Gardner amp;Maclntyre). This anxiety is linked directly to performing in the target language, so it is not just a general performance anxiety. Language anxiety ranks high among factors influencing language learning regardless of whether the setting is informal (learning language “on the streets”) or formal (in the language classroom). (Hu Yining, 2009: 169)

The teaching research shows that moderate anxiety can promote learning while excessive anxiety would backfire. The negative relationship between English learning anxiety and achievement has been confirmed. Foreign language learning anxiety has become a common problem existing in junior high school students and run through the entire junior high school stage. Students with excessive anxiety are unwilling to participate in the English learning activities, and even produce unpleasant or dislike negative emotions. In the long run, students will gradually lose learning enthusiasm and interest, and even weary of study.

2.3 The Theoretical Framework

2.3.1 Affective Filter Hypothesis

Affective factors’ filtering effects on English learning was firstly proposed by Dulay amp; Burt. On that basis, Krashen developed it to affective filter hypothesis. He thought affective filtering is a kind of psychological barrier that prevents language learner completely absorbing comprehensible input. Affective factors influencing language learning include attitudes to language, motivation, self-confidence and anxiety.

2.3.2 Multiple Intelligences Theory

The Multiple Intelligences Theory was put forward by Gardner, an American psychologist and educationist. Human beings’ intelligence architecture is constituted at least eight kinds of intelligence and people show different intelligence types due to the different combinations. He also believed non-intelligent factors including the self-confidence, motivation, anxiety and other emotional factors might play a more vital role than cognitive factors, at least as important as the cognitive.

2.3.3 Humanism Psychology

Humanism Psychology emerged in the 1950s in the US and Maslow amp; Rogers are the main representatives. Humanism Psychology focuses on emotional factors’ influence on students’ learning. What’s more, it emphasizes that education should lay stress on man, respect everyone’s independent personality, protect each person’s self-esteem, help everyone fully tap the potential, develop and realize their own value. Roger also pointed out that emotion and cognition are two inalienable organic components of human spiritual world, and that we can bring emotional factors into full play to promote students’ learning.

3. Problems and Necessity of Affective Teaching

3.1 Problems of Affective Teaching

With the spread of the new curriculum, middle school teachers’ teaching concepts are changing, from focusing on cognition to emotion. Although they have a primary understanding of the affective strategy, there still exist kinds of problems in the actual teaching activities.

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