On the Affective Factors in Foreign Language Teaching and Learning

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  [Abstract] The paper talks about the effective factors functioning in the field of education, psychology and foreign language teaching. And it also specifically elaborates the principles of helping language learners overcome negative affections and develop positive ones.
  [Key Words] affection factors foreign language teaching teaching methods
  
  The quickening globalization has heightened the need for effective foreign language learning and teaching .As in china, with the entrance of WTO and development of country, FLT has been put in a crucial position. However, its low efficiency and unsatisfactory effect can hardly meet learners’ needs adequately. This problem undoubtedly owes a lot to the negligence of affective states in the process of teaching and learning.
  As a matter of fact, experts in the field of psychology and education have long been conscious of the significance of affection since 1960’s when the humanistic psychology came to the fore. Their main theories are: affection is the basic need of human being; cognition and affection are inseparable; learners’ proficiency is fulfilled to the largest extent when both cognition and affection are involved. Language experts and researchers in the west also tried to explore the field of affection and made both theoretical and practical study over the past several decades. They found that learners’ affective state influences the learning behavior and learning effect directly. They have also tried to give consideration to the affective factors in foreign language learning and teaching theories as well as approaches.
  However, in the present foreign language classroom, especially in China, learners’ affective factors in the learning process have not enough attention or even been totally neglected. Inadequate job in the affective domain has inevitably led to the present situation of inefficient and ineffective foreign language teaching and learning.
  1 Affective domain in education and psychology
  Over the past several decades, taxonomy of education objectives has been developed when education attempted to describe what can be learned in school, what goals can be established and carried out, and what behavioral changes can be achieved. This taxonomy has three separated interrelated domains: the cognitive, the affective and the psychology.
  As a part of educational objectives, affective domain holds equal significant as the other two. As Reilly and Lewis mentioned, the affective domain covers all behaviors associated with feelings and emotions. Positive and negative feelings, emotions, attitudes, values, interests, appreciations, aspirations, morals, character——all are components of the affective domain. While objectives in the cognitive domain are related to the mind, to the results of perceiving, remembering, analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating and the like forms of intellectual activity, such activities are obviously domain in school. Teachers in the fields such as music, physical education, etc. are much concerned with this type of learning.
  The affective domain plays a crucial role in person’s education. An important part of education attempts to do is to develop positive inner direction and self-control in students. When we try to help students to develop this inner direction and control, we cannot afford to ignore interests, beliefs, attitudes, and values——the factors in affective domain. As Bruner (1996) remains us that if our educational institutions do not deal with affective issues, which are the basis for healthy value systems, learners will turn to a uncountable of ‘anti—schools’ and eventually results in serious social consequence.
  The inadequate attention to affect in the practice of education
  However, the importance of affection and the inseparable relation between affection and cognition are generally overlooked in education itself. Most teachers do not plan for affective learning experiences though they actually do influence the learners’ affective domain in almost everything they do whether they are conscious of it or not. Most people in our society believe that schools should teach “reading”, “writing”, and stay out of such areas as attitudes, morals, and values. This is unfortunate, because when the cognitive skills of thinking, reasoning, problem solving, and understanding are seen as basic, the widespread concern about attitudes, values, morals, mental health, and personal and social adjustment are also being found to become vital problem in the society now.
  Furthermore, the lack of attention to affect has directly led to some learners’ Emotional Illiteracy that result in the disintegration of mind, incapability of handing proper relationship with people, loss of healthy development both physically and psychically.
  As result of the negligence of affection in the process of cognitive ability development, human potential is being wasted and the way of more effective learning is blocked. Learner’s optimal learning potential is being extensively compromised for the disregard of positive affection construction and negative affection removal. Therefore, education must involve learners’ both domain of cognition and affection to attain the goal of effective whole person education.
  2Affective study on language learning
  In recent several decades, partly due to impact from humanistic psychology and improved notions of education, researches on second or foreign language learning and teaching has gradually changed its center to study of multiple variable which influence learning.
  Variable as learning processes, learning context or environment, cognitive factors and affective factors invited researchers’ great interests. Researchers investigated and experienced from different standpoint. Among them the research related to psycholinguistics obtained notable achievement comparatively. Under such background, the influence of affective factors to language learning attracted much attention, and affection have been made to explore ways of incorporating aspects of the affective dimension of the learner into language teaching and learning.
  2.1 SLA theories involving affection factors
  The significant role of affective factors in language learning gas been discussed and emphasized in various second language acquisition theories.
  In the Accommodation Theory, Giles (1997) regards motivation (one of the affective factors) as the primary determinant of L2 proficiency. He considers the level of motivation to be a reflex of how individual learners define themselves in ethnic terms. When motivation is high as a result of favorable socio-psychological attitudes, the learner will benefit from formal instruction in the L2, and is also likely to avail himself of the opportunities for informal acquisition. Hence when the individual learner is likely to be highly motivation to learn the L2, he or she acquires a high level of proficiency.
  2.2 FLT methods giving consideration to affection
  The concern about individual learners’ affective state in the second language acquisition is generally a great step forward in SLA research. The teaching methods came to the fore in 1970s and all of them take into account the affective side of language learning in a very central manner. For example, there are two methods that belong to the affective-humanistic approach. The humanistic techniques engage the whole person, including the emotions and feelings (the affective realm) as well as linguistic knowledge. It goes without saying that affection must be an essential topic in these methods. The Silent Way cultivates learners’ independence, autonomy and responsibility though teachers’ sensitivity and management with silence. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), which has had pervasive influence on language teaching, gives affection its due attention too. It appeared in the late 1970s as a reaction to structuralism and to methods that neglected teaching learners to communicate as well as the important affective aspects of learning. In CLT, teacher is a facilitator of students’ learning; learners are motivated to study foreign language since they feel they are learning for use; security is enhanced though many cooperative interactions.
  In summary, affection and affective factors have invited much attention in the field of second or foreign language learning. At present, no one can deny the significant role of affection in language learning. Teachers and experts have also done a lot in the work of controlling affections rationally to promote language learning, which surely leave much resource for further exploration on affective language education.
  However, affection of human being is no complicated and subtle that it could never be an easy matter to be handled
  3 Principles of Helping Language Learners Overcome Negative Affects and Develop Positive Ones
  As mentioned in the former parts, the factors affecting which affect foreign language learning are interrelated. It is impossible to isolate completely the influence of any one of them and to tackle them in an isolate way. Former researchers’ and experts’ efforts also proved that it is impossible to solve the learners’ affective problems in a so-called perfect approach. Thus, to find some guiding principles and feasible strategies which can be adopted in any foreign language classrooms is more practical than to seek for one perfect way.
  Removing learner’s negative affective barriers paves ways way for the growth of positive affects, and the development of positive affects in turn helps the eliminate of negative ones. Thus, helping learners solve the affective problems needs the efforts from both the removal of negative affective factors and the construction of positive affective factors. In this part, efforts will be engaged in the exploration of basic principles that could lead to foreign language learners’ overcoming their negative affects and building up positive ones. The exploration will be carried out respectively from the angle of learner, teacher, and classroom transaction, because these three aspects are basic and indispensable in foreign language learning and teaching process.
  3.1 Helping learners built a healthy self-concept
  Self-concept is the image a person has himself or herself. It involves the perception of the comparison between self and others, of how other people view the self and of what kind of person the self wants to be. As described by Rogers (1959), the concept of self consists of two parts: the ideal and the real self, or in other words, the subjective one who perceives the self-I, and the objective one being perceived—Me. When there is incongruence between these two concepts, that is, if there is an unhealthy self-concept, complex emotional experience will be aroused; people will suffer anxiety, confusion or the other emotional pains
  A healthy self-concept is crucial for learners. It helps them to keep the inner congruence and provides them rational explanation for experience. It also decides learners’ expectation for future success. Self-concept connects closely to self-esteem and other affective factors in foreign language learning, such as anxiety, motivation, etc. most ways of behaving adopted by people are consist with his foreign language learning, and believes that all classrooms regard him to be the left-behind, he will choose to let himself go and give up any effects in foreign language learning for the lack of confidence and motivation. Facing the same score, a student who thinks himself average may feel satisfied and cheerful. On the contrary, a student who thinks himself a top one in the class may be frustrated. When learners hold a negative self-concept, they will relate any experience with negative self-evaluation; when they hold a positive self-concept, any experience will be endowed with positive meaning.
  In addition, self-concept decides learners’ expectations for future. Learners with negative self-concept have low self-expectation. They expects for negative assessment from the outside world and make adequate preparation for negative behaviors as well. Learning will not be attractive for them and motivations will be gone in the long run. So, we can see that the process of self-concept development is a circle: negative self-concept impedes the process of foreign language learning, then poor performance in foreign language learning will be lead to more negative self-concept: positive self-concept promotes language learning, then good performance will win teacher’s praise which will stimulate the rise of more positive self concept. Thus, to build a healthy self-concept is of great necessity for learners.
  A person’s self-concept is formed as a result of contact and experience with other people and the way others view and treat him or her, which indicates that it is feasible to help students to built a healthy self-concept though others’ efforts. Teachers and other learners in the learning environment, as significant others accompanying a learners’ learning, undoubtedly can and should play an important role in the process of the learner’s self-concept formation. Thus, helping learners to build a healthy self-concept should be one of the teachers’ most important tasks.
  3.2 Creating a friendly and active classroom climate
  Classroom climate refers to the emotional condition of the learning group in the classroom. It is the indispensable base for normal and effective classroom transactions. Classroom climate can be friendly, healthy and dynamic or passive, indifferent and boring. These two types are also referred respectively as supportive classroom climate and defensive classroom climate.
  Under the active classroom climate, the classroom settings and activities meet the learners’ desire for knowledge and their psychological characteristics: the teacher develops a harmonious relationship with learners; students possess contented and happy emotions. On the other hand, under the defensive classroom climate, learners’ needs for knowledge and mental care cannot be satisfied; the relationship between students and teacher is indifferent; students feel depressed, suppressed, tense or anxious, which are apparent blocks for foreign language learning.
  Creating a friendly and active classroom climate means providing learners a scene or environment for tree learning as Rogers (1969) appealed. Such a classroom reflects warmth, empathy, and genuineness, plus Unconditional Positive Regard. Under such climate, the affective filtering is weakened to lower degree, learners are encouraged to perform in their own way without worrying about negative social evaluation; their anxiety is relieved; they are more likely to take risks in learning rather than inhibited. In a friendly and dynamic classroom, students’ motivations are much easier to be aroused and internalized too. So, creating a supportive classroom climate is incontrovertibly needed for improving foreign language learners’ affect and their learning as well.
  Creating a friendly and active classroom climate lays a great part in the teacher’s responsibility. The contradicting emotions between teacher and learners should be changed at first. Then, the designing of the classroom tasks should fit students’ standard. And sometimes, channel may also be offered for the tired or suppressed students to release their fatigue in the class. Though classroom climate is also affected by group dynamics, which is beyond teachers’ control, most times it should be within teachers’ attentions.
  3.3 Being a human with positive affection
  A teacher or a facilitator is a human being with feelings and personality firstly. As a significant person who guides learners into another language and culture, he or she works as partly as source of knowledge to learners and also a model of positive affection and virtue. As Dornyei (1998) pointed out,” one of the main ways in which teachers can motivate their students is by being models of motivation themselves”. It is impossible for a teacher without positive affections to build positive emotional for students
  To be a good facilitator with positive affection means to be a person with fine personality and mental quality as well as a person bearing confidence towards students. It also means to give learners more freedom with the belief that they can exploit their own proficiency, to their personal experiences, and to try hard to explore the learners’ inner world to find more clues to facilitate their learning. Whatever methods or approaches teachers take in forging language classroom, being a facilitator with positive affections should be always put at the first place
  3.3 Being a human with positive affection
  A teacher or a facilitator is a human being with feelings and personality firstly. As a significant person who guides learners into another language and culture, he or she works as partly as source of knowledge to learners and also a model of positive affection and virtue. As Dornyei (1998) pointed out,” one of the main ways in which teachers can motivate their students is by being models of motivation themselves”. It is impossible for a teacher without positive affections to build positive emotional for students
  To be a good facilitator with positive affection means to be a person with fine personality and mental quality as well as a person bearing confidence towards students. It also means to give learners more freedom with the belief that they can exploit their own proficiency, to their personal experiences, and to try hard to explore the learners’ inner world to find more clues to facilitate their learning. Whatever methods or approaches teachers take in forging language classroom, being a facilitator with positive affections should be always put at the first place.
  Conclusion
  To remove foreign language learners’ affective barriers and build a healthy affective system in FLT has never been an easy job because of the complexity of affect and also the variations of language-teaching situations, esp for the teachers,
  What I have tried and endeavored in this thesis merely aims at raising teachers’ and learners’ awareness to affect in foreign language learning and calling for more attempts to cope with the affective problems in language learning. I do hope more language experts, teachers and learners can shed their concern to the affective aspects of language learning and teaching, and find more strategies and methods to deal with the problem of learners’ affective factors, so as to promote the effect and efficiency of foreign language learning and teaching.
  references:
  [1] Krashen , S. 1982. Principles and Practice in SLA . Pergamon. Oxford.
  [2] Nuttall, C 1982. Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language. Heinemann,London.
  [3]Richards ,J and Rogers,T .1986. Approaches and Methods in ELT.CUP.Cambridge.
  [4]石國红.师生情感在英语教学中的作用[J].教育实践与研究,2000(5).
  [5]李如密.教学艺术论[M].济南:山东教育出版社,1995
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