论文总字数：38149字

摘 要

众所周知，语言是人类通往世界文明的桥梁。而听这项技能在人们日常语言交际中占据着重要地位。先听后说，先理解后表达是我们在学习语言过程中形成的一般规律。在英语学习中，听、说、读、写是四项必不可少的技能，在这四者中，听是排在首位的，显而易见，听力的重要性非同一般。在实际教学中，影响听力效果的主、客观因素有很多。但是，由于听力本身的特殊性，使得情感因素对其影响尤为重大。本文以克拉申的情感过滤假说为理论依据，联系学生学习听力的实际，主要阐述了情感因素对听力理解的影响。同时，本文也探寻了克拉申的情感过滤假说对英语听力教学的一些启示。

关键词：情感过滤假说；英语听力；教学启示

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. Introduction to Affective Filter Hypothesis 3

3.1 Definition of Affective Filter Hypothesis 3

3.2 Principle of Affective Filter Hypothesis 4

4. Importance of Affective Factors in English Listening 5

4.1 Particularity of English listening comprehension 5

4.2 Actuality of English listening class 6

4.3 Impact of affective factors on English listening comprehension 6

5. Enlightenment of Affective Filter Hypothesis on English Listening Teaching and Learning 9

5.1 Enlightenment from the perspective of teachers 9

5.2 Enlightenment from the perspective of learners 12

6. Conclusion 14

Works Cited 15

1. Introduction

With the emergence of quality-oriented education and new national curriculum standard, the affective aspects have played an increasing significant role in the second language class. Therefore, researching the impact of the affective factors on the second language teaching and learning may help the learners to master the target language more efficiently.

Affect refers to people’s moods or feelings. It is an attitude caused by the experience in which the objective things meet or fail to meet people’s own needs. (Guan 214) In the past few decades, the research community of foreign language teaching has paid much more attention to studying the cognitive factors instead of affective aspects. However, with the development of education, a large number of explorations have been made by many researchers to study the filter function of the affect on language input since 1970s. What’s more, these researchers pointed out that the processes of cognition and affect are two kinds of complex psychological procedures in human’s cognitive activities. There are not only differences but also relations between them. For example, the affective process is produced on the basis of cognitive process, and, in turn, affects it. That is to say, the affective process could adjust and control the cognitive activity. “In the last decade, we have recognized that the impact of affect on language learning is at least as great as that of cognitive factors, and tends to be even greater.” (Stern 435) At the same time, the practice of foreign language teaching also proved that without the function of affect, the learner’s motivation is hard to mobilize even though he has a great learning potential. (Zhang 127) So, we can say that the value of the research on affective factors is not less than that of cognitive factors.

During our long history of language learning, we know that listening occupies an important position in the learning process, for that it is not only the premise of language communication, but also the necessary way of language input. When students are learning English listening comprehension, it is inevitable that the process will be accompanied by all kinds of positive and negative affective experiences. Thus, to stimulate students’ positive affect which will facilitate their learning process, as well as to avoid the negative affect which will suspend their learning enthusiasm, is of great importance in improving the teaching quality of English listening comprehension.

However, in China, most of the researches are about the relations between affective factors and the second language acquisition. There are few researches conducted on the impact of the affective factors on English listening teaching and learning. Therefore, more studies should be made in this field.

This thesis analyzes the importance of affective factors in English listening teaching and learning. Also, it explores the effective ways to reduce the impact of affective filter and increase the amount of language absorption in English listening class.

2. Literature Review

In the early 1980s, aiming at Second Language Acquisition, Krashen, the famous American linguist, put forward The Monitor Theory, laying a great impact on the foreign language world. This theory includes five hypotheses, among them, the fifth hypothesis, namely the Affective Filter Hypothesis, reveals the relationship between learners’ affect and language acquisition. It has posed a powerful challenge to the traditional foreign language teaching, which only emphasized the grammar structure learning.

Since Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis aroused people’s attention on the affective factors, many domestic and foreign experts have conducted deeper research on this aspect. In 1999, Jane Arnold published a book named Affect in Language Learning, which is a collection of many experts’, such as Schumann’s and Stevick’s opinions on the affective factors. “They discussed different functions of affects from the perspective of teachers and students, and provided us with much enlightenment on researching the affective factors in foreign language learning.” (Arnold 28)

Wang Chuming did a lot of research on the question of what in the world influences the foreign language teaching and learning. He pointed out that “there are two major factors influencing the foreign language learning, one is the learner’s affect, the other is his native language. Even the cultural infiltration mode which has a great impact on the second language acquisition is also based on the study of learners’ affect.” (Wang 8)

Educational Psychology believes that the learner’s affective control is one of the biggest factors which influence one’s learning quality during the studying process. (Li 103) Moreover, the Affective Filter Hypothesis is also a reflection of Humanistic Psychology in the second language acquisition theory. Humanistic Psychology stressed the unity of cognition and affect, which means the development of affect is equal important as that of intelligence. (Zheng and Huang 296) This opinion shares many similarities with Stern’s, which is mentioned above.

Most of these ideas systematically illustrate the importance of affective factors, especially their impact on foreign language learning. However, few researches specify the impact of affect on a particular aspect of learning. In fact, this type of research is of more practical significance. Therefore, different from other researches, this thesis chose English listening comprehension as an entry point, and further discussed the impact and the enlightenment of Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis on English listening teaching and learning based on the predecessors’ achievements.

3. Introduction to Affective Filter Hypothesis

3.1 Definition of Affective Filter Hypothesis

Nowadays, the role of affective factors in foreign language acquisition has aroused much attention among teachers and experts. When we study the function of affective factors, it is certain that we will mention the Affective Filter Hypothesis. However, not everyone can understand this term thoroughly. Thus, in the beginning, it’s necessary for us to know about the definition of the Affective Filter Hypothesis.

The concept of affective filter was proposed by Dulay and Burt in 1977, aiming to explain how the affective factors influence the foreign language learning process. They defined the affective filter as “an internal processing system, which subconsciously prevents learners from absorbing language due to the effect of what psychologists called ‘affective factors’.” (Dulay, Burt and Krashen 4) Based on this concept, Krashen put forward the famous Affective Filter Hypothesis. It shows us the phenomenon where the outcome of language learning is different from person to person is mainly caused by learners’ affective factors, for that affects have a filtering effect on language input, which function as a barrier to control the amount of learners’ contact and absorption of the input materials. (Krashen 7)

From what mentioned above, it can be concluded that the Affective Filter Hypothesis is a psychological concept. It associates psychology with education in order to investigate the impact of affect on one’s learning outcome.

3.2 Principle of Affective Filter Hypothesis

Krashen thinks learners’ emotional state or attitude, such as motivation, confidence and anxiety can affect the necessary input of acquisition. “Only through the function of affective filter can language input turn into language intake.” (Krashen 21) During the process of language acquisition, if the function of affective filter is too strong, the language input will be blocked in the brain, that is to say be filtered out, thus, the learners will be prevented from entering the complete Language Acquisition Device. On the contrary, if the function of affective filter is very weak, language input will turn into language intake to a maximum extent. Then, learners can smoothly enter the Language Acquisition Device to acquire the language competence. This principle can be expressed in the following operation:

Affective Filter

Input→│┄→Language acquisition device →Acquired language competence

Operation of the “Affective Filter”

(Krashen 32)

Krashen also pointed out that “only when the input is comprehensible can the acquisition goes on smoothly, for that only comprehensible input can be transformed by learners’ brain devices, and at last be absorbed as learners’ own knowledge.” (Krashen 23) So, as is shown to us, this thesis will take the principle above as the basis, mainly to analyze the importance of different affective factors in English listening comprehension, and explore some enlightenment on it.

4. Importance of Affective Factors in English Listening

Students’ affect has become an important aspect which is worthy of teachers’ attention during the process of language acquisition. Wang Chuming considers that “the reason why affect is important is that it is the engine of study. If the affect plays a good role, it can enlighten one’s learning competence, mobilize one’s learning initiative as well as solve the psychological and ideological problems in the process of learning.” (Wang 10)

Therefore, to seek for some enlightenment on English listening teaching and learning, it’s necessary for us to have a thorough understanding of the importance of affective factors in English listening comprehension.

4.1 Particularity of English listening comprehension

When people are listening, they tend to experience three steps. First, they get the input information. Next, the information will be processed in their brain at a fast speed. And finally, the listeners will take in a certain amount of the input information. Obviously, it is a complicated process of psychological language activities. From getting the voice to understanding the content of the input information, people must go through the following procedures, that is to say, to identify the words and sentence components in the continuous voice current and remember them temporarily, at the same time, to quickly make the sentence components before and after integrated into the complete information, and to store it in the memory. This cognitive process is finished instantly, and is going on continuously.

Meanwhile, during the listening process, the form of language input is expressed by voice. Therefore, the listeners can’t be able to control the difficulty, the speed and the characteristics of the input materials. In addition, unlike the output processes of speaking and writing, which only emphasize expressing one’s thoughts, the listening process requires not only one’s ability of listening but also that of understanding and absorbing. “What’s worse, listeners don’t have the opportunity of back-reading, which is allowed in the reading activities.” (Ni 46) Taking English listening for instance, English is an acquired foreign language to Chinese students, namely, it is not taught when they were born. So, this factor adds the comprehensive difficulty to the English listening process.

In a word, the particularity mentioned above determines that the impact of affect is especially great on English listening comprehension.

4.2 Actuality of English listening class

At present, there are few complete listening classes in middle schools. Actually, English teachers always spend about 15 minutes practicing students’ listening ability by assigning some listening tasks at the beginning or ending of their classes. As Krashen proposed that the comprehensible input should be realized by the sufficient quantity of input information, (Krashen 22) the listening input in everyday’s class seems not so enough. And if the phenomenon continues, it will restrain the students’ ability of comprehension in some way.

What’s worse, the condition when students’ learning speed can’t catch up with teachers’ teaching speed is very common in English listening class nowadays. In many cases, teachers only pay attention to students’ input and output abilities instead of conducting a deep research on the problems arisen in class. Actually, many factors contribute to the phenomenon where students aren’t willing to cooperate with teachers. For example, the content and form of the listening material are out of date, which can neither catch the students’ attention nor make them study happily. Besides, when the teacher doesn’t make full preparations for the class or chooses the difficult listening materials which go beyond the students’ present level, the students are bound to be interfered by a number of negative emotions, such as boredom, anxiety, nervousness, disappointment and so on. As a result, due to the teachers’ neglect of students’ affects in the listening process, the efficiency of the present English listening class is not so high.

From this situation, we can learn that the principles of Krashen’s Affective Hypothesis haven’t been entirely put into use in middle school’s English listening classes. But since affect is really a necessary part which can’t be overlooked, both teachers and students must attach much importance to it during the process of English listening comprehension.

4.3 Impact of affective factors on English listening comprehension

Krashen believes that the individual differences in the second language learning are mainly caused by different functions of affective filter. In fact, affective factor such as confidence, motivation and anxiety respectively has an impact on the speed and outcome of foreign language learning from different aspects. (Krashen 33)

4.3.1 Impact of self-confidence on English listening comprehension

Self-confidence is a person’s self-assessment of his own knowledge and ability level. A survey showed that the confident learners tend to feel better about themselves. What’s more, when confronted with difficulty, they always smile at it and try to mobilize all of their acquired knowledge and competence to finish the difficult task with high efficiency. As a matter of fact, their academic records are usually proved to be satisfying. However, the diffident learners are more likely to give way to anxiety and evasion when they’re faced with problems. More terribly, they always have difficulty in calming their mind to think about the questions, the result of which will hinder the process of language intake.

In addition, when choosing learning tasks, the learners who are lack of self-confidence tend to choose the question which is extremely easy or unbelievably difficult, for that they think choosing the easy one can ensure the completion of the task. Moreover, though they can’t solve the difficult question, they can attribute it to the external factors which are uncontrollable to maintain their self-esteems. But in fact, learners who can’t choose the suitable questions for themselves to challenge, will not be able to improve their learning standard effectively.

Thus, it can be seen that self-confidence really has a great impact on English listening comprehension. While the confident learners can be able to use their acquired knowledge and take appropriate cognitive strategies to get, understand and absorb the input information, the diffident learners always feel anxious and nervous during the English listening process. “And these negative emotions will build a barrier in their mind, which is bound to prevent them from understanding the listening content efficiently.” (Li 82)

4.3.2 Impact of motivation on English listening comprehension

In foreign language learning, motivation is a kind of inner impetus which causes the learning activities directly. What’s more, it is the motive power which could maintain and improve the learning enthusiasm. Gardner and Lambert divided the motivation which has an impact on the second language acquisition into two types, one is instrumental motivation, the other is integrative motivation. (Gardner and Lambert 186) Instrumental motivation refers to learners’ desire to regard the foreign language as a tool in order to achieve a certain goal. On the other hand, integrative motivation means the desire created by learners because they have a special interest in the community of the target language and want to live in it. These two kinds of learning motivations are both beneficial to language learning. In many cases, they can coexist, and the difference only lies in the different functions caused by them.

In the process of English listening comprehension, only do the students have a strong motivation and desire can they mobilize the acquired language knowledge, background information, and all kinds of cognitive strategies to get new information positively and take part in communicative activities. When they have the right learning motivation, they will stimulate the desire and interest in learning tasks. At the same time, their confidence and determination to overcome the difficulty will be enhanced, which will help them complete the communication tasks positively. However, if the learners don’t have the strong motivation, they are more likely to treat the learning tasks passively. Automatically, their defensive mechanism will be established, which may make them neither able to get the information, nor to take part in the communicative activities set in the class.

4.3.3 Impact of anxiety on English listening comprehension

Anxiety is a combination of unpleasant affects and psychological discomfort caused by many factors. Through investigation, the linguists found that sometimes there is a negative correlation between anxiety and foreign language learning. But sometimes they have nothing to do with each other. So, in 1985, a great linguist named Scovel further divided the anxiety into “facilitative anxiety” and “debilitating anxiety”. Facilitative anxiety changes the pressure into impetus, which is a help to the completion of learning tasks, while “debilitating anxiety” causes nervousness, which may hinder the completion of the task. (Scovel 136) Additionally, Bailey divided debilitating anxiety into “trait anxiety” and “environmental anxiety”. (Li 82) But whichever anxiety will all have an impact on one’s learning quality.

In English listening process, if the learners are under the condition of anxiety, the emotional experiences such as tension, worry, fear, and so on will be bound to arise. More terribly, if the learners feel nervous, anxious and scared, their psychological activities will be in the state of inhibition. As a result, their mind is becoming dull and brain will turn into blank. Any input material can neither be understood nor be absorbed by themselves.

5. Enlightenment of Affective Filter Hypothesis on English Listening Teaching and Learning

From the three aspects mentioned above, we realize that affective factors play a very important role in the learning process of English listening comprehension. Generally speaking, when the learner lacks motivation and self-confidence, and is over anxious or in poor physical condition, we can say that his affective filter level is inappropriate or too high. At this time, the learner is faced with the low amount of comprehensible language intake, which will prevent his process of acquisition. Contrarily, when the learner is in a good mental state, and has full learning motivation, strong self-confidence and a proper amount of anxiety, we can consider that his affective filter level is appropriate or low. And then, the learner can take in a large amount of comprehensible language input information, which is beneficial to his second language acquisition.

So, in order to reduce the effect of affective filter in English listening class, it is essential for us to seek for some enlightenment from Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis. Actually, we can adjust some strategies from the perspective of teachers and learners themselves, such as to create a relaxing learning environment, to develop the learners’ self-confidence, to motivate students’ interest and to reduce their anxiety. In a word, all of these strategies should aim to improve the efficiency in English listening class.

5.1 Enlightenment from the perspective of teachers

5.1.1 Enhancing learners’ self-confidence

Teachers should create a relaxed and harmonious atmosphere in class, so as to enhance the learners’ self-confidence and establish a teacher-student relationship with the features of equality, friendship and mutual trust. Besides, they need to try their best to place students in a “non- resistance state”.

Furthermore, teachers are supposed to hold a tolerant attitude to students’ different learning methods and styles. For example, some learners tend to apply symbolic methods to take notes, while some others like to use spelling to do so. As for these two different learning habits, teachers should not criticize either of them, but take an appropriate way to guide the students.

In English-listening class, it is also not appropriate for teachers to force students to answer questions, because if teachers show too much impatience at the beginning of the class and emphasize the ability of output, they will put serious psychological pressure on students, which will definitely affect the students’ listening process. (Guan 215) During the process of everyday learning, teachers are supposed to encourage students, especially those who are introverted with strong self-esteem and low self-confidence. For example, when this kind of students are answering questions, whether they are right or wrong, teachers should smile to them and say “thank you”. Besides, teachers are suggested to write some words full of encouragement in these students’ daily homework, such as “good”, “excellent” and so on.

5.1.2 Stimulating learners’ motivation

Teachers are also expected to cultivate students’ interest in learning and stimulate their learning motivation. As the saying goes that interest is the best teacher of all, we can learn there will be no motivation if students do not have any interest. Moreover, confidence can not be found in them if they are lack of motivation. For the same reason, students are unlikely to study well if they don’t have confidence.

During the teaching of English listening, teachers should not only enable students to master the certain basic knowledge and skills, but also cultivate students’ interest in learning. In view of the students who lack of learning motivation and interest, teachers can stimulate their learning motivation by many kinds of ways. For instance, teachers can explain the significance of foreign language learning on students themselves and on social development, so as to preach the importance of listening comprehension in language acquisition and social occasions.

Teachers can also use the transfer method to stimulate students’ learning motivation. For example, if one student wants to travel abroad, the English teacher can use his interest to tell him that foreign language learning, especially the listening skill, will help him a lot, thus to stimulate his learning motivation.

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