Students’ Affective Factors and Linguistics Teaching

Purpose of This Paper To find out the effective teaching tactics which can cultivate the students’ active learning affective factors through the analysis on the inner connection between the students’ affective factors and linguistics learning.

Methodology Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis

Outline 1. Introduction 2. Theoretical Basis 3. Affective Teaching in Linguistics Course 3.1 Affective Teaching 3.2 Strategies to Carry out Affective Teaching 4.Conclusion

1. Introduction 1)A Brief Introduction to Linguistics Course 2)Current Problems in Linguistics Teaching e.g. textbook, teachers’ proficiency, teaching methods ------ It is urgent to reform the linguistics course teaching 3)Literature Review on Research in Linguistics Teaching in China. Little attention has been paid to this aspect. It is a pity for the improvement of English majors. Pan Zhixin made a tentative probe through a small-scale questionnaire survey for a better way of offering the course of Introduction to Linguistics. (Pan Zhixin, 2002:47) Wang Yang made a conclusion about the linguistics teaching, pointed out the main problems in current linguistics teaching and made some suggestions for improving linguistics teaching. (Wang Yang, 2004:57)

With the reference of his own English teaching experience, Wang Yang analyzed and discussed the problems in linguistics classroom teaching. (Wang Yang, 2005:64) Zhu Yafu discussed the problems in linguistics teaching mainly from the perspective of English majors in normal universities. (Zhu Yafu, 2005:24)

All the researches are quite useful to linguistics teaching All the researches are quite useful to linguistics teaching. However, they focus more on the functions of the cognitive factors than on the affective factors in the teaching process and neglect the affective factors. In fact, the students’ affective factors have great influence on teaching and learning effect. It is meaningful to activate the students’ positive affective factors in linguistics teaching so as to help the students have a better understanding of the linguistics.

2. Theoretical Basis Filter Language Input→ ∣----→ Acquisition→ Acquired Competence

The Affective Filter Hypothesis accounts for the failure of students’ acquisition of linguistics in two ways: unsuitable input high affective filter

A Complete Learning Process Teacher’s affective filter---Teacher’s language output--- Learners’ affective filter--- Language acquisition

3. Affective Teaching in Linguistics Teaching 1). What is the affective teaching? 2).What are the main affective factors influencing the students’ learning? 3). What causes these factors? 4). What are the effective strategies to stimulate the students’ learning linguistics?

1). What is the affective teaching? Affective teaching is a kind of teaching approach in which teachers, in the teaching process, make good use of the positive consideration, therefore to consummate teaching goals, to improve teaching methods and to consolidate teaching effects. (Lu Jiamei,1993)

2.)What are the main affective factors influencing the students’ learning? The factors which is concerned with the language learner as in individual and that which focuses on the learner as a participant in a socio-cultural situation( Arnold, 2000) Main affective factors in linguistics learning: Motivation Self-confidence Anxiety

Main affective factors in linguistics learning: ◆Motivation ----lack interest ---- no use ---- too many terms and theories ----- teaching method ◆Self-confidence ---- difficult theories ---- evaluation ◆Anxiety ---- be anxious in class ---- try to escape from the class

3). What causes the negative factors 1. the learners’ attitude and proficiency 2. the features of linguistics course 3. textbook 4. teaching method

4). What are the effective strategies to stimulate the students’ learning linguistics? To cultivate the motivation: Correct the misunderstanding about the purpose of linguistics learning Emphasize the practical use during teaching process Examples: Word building---help the students know the inner structure of the words and the way of word building-----useful for them to memorize the words Error analysis ---- useful for the students who are going to be teachers in the future

To Develop the Self- confidence of the Students Attention the input: ＊choose suitable teaching content ＊introduce more information about linguistics to students through different ways b. Encourage the students to take part in the class by designing various activities according to the content c. Establish the rich evaluation system

Reduce the anxiety Try to establish harmonious class atmosphere Improve the teaching method Use the advanced teaching tool Develop the students’ cooperative learning Enrich the extracurricular activities

Examples: Definition of competence and performance in the textbook competence is the ideal language user’s language or the rules his language. Performance is the actual realization of this knowledge in utterances. (胡壮麟,2000:25)

A Simple explanation Competence refers to a speaker’s knowledge as manifest in his ability to produce and to understand a theoretically infinite number of sentences most of which he may have seen or heard before. Performance refers to the specific utterances, including grammatical mistakes and non-linguistic features like hesitations accompanying the use of the language.

Another example: There are several theories about the definition of semantics: conceptualism, mechanism, contextualism, behaviorism, functionalism, Behaviorism ----望梅止渴 外部刺激—语言反应—语言刺激—想摘梅子

4. Conclusion Linguistics plays a very important role in improving English majors quality. However, the teaching effect is far from satisfaction, which not only results from the text book, the teacher’s quality, the difficult theory but also has connection with the learners’ affective factors. The ignorance of the relationship between the students’ affective factors and their learning will have negative influence on the teaching and learning effect. So only teachers pay attention to the role of the students’ affect in linguistics teaching can the learning effect be guaranteed and can the value of linguistics be revealed.

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