A Study on Students’ Affective Factors in Junior High School English Teaching

Affect is considered as aspects of emotion, feeling, mood or attitude which condition behaviors in second language acquisition. Positive affect is good for studying while negative affect will inevitably hinder learners’ learning process. As we know, students in junior high school are special groups as they are experiencing great changes both in physiology and psychology. Their affect can be easily influenced by external and internal factors. Therefore, it is of vital importance to pay close attention to students’ affective factors in English learning process, particularly to the negative ones. Based on the results of the previous research about affects in second language acquisition, the study finds that junior high school students have the following negative affective factors such as boredom, anxiety, hopelessness, inhibition and low self-confidence in their English learning. Then some suggestions for cultivating and improving students’ affect are put forward in the hope of improving junior high school English teaching and learning.