ByYang Honger
Puyang?Oilfield?No.?2?Senior?Middle?School
Introduction
In our past educational circle, people laid stress on just the training to the students’ rational and cognitive abilities. It was always ignored of their progress on the aspects of perception. That caused the emotional illiteracy in our education before (Jane Arnold, 2000). However, today with the high-speed progress of the society, under the reformation of the elementary education, many affective factors in education get more and more attention. Emotional factor is one of the most important factors which will heavily affect the result of education. Today the study of emotional factor has already had some definite achievements. And it is successfully being used in the daily education in every cause, especially in our foreign language learning-English. For English learning is just like the study of other languages, it is a process of accumulating with interests. So the importance of emotional factors is easy to see.
Since emotional factor has its special influence in language learning, as a will-be English teacher, we must learn more about it and its target.
Ⅱ.Emotional factors and the middle school students
A. The definition of emotion and its effects in teaching
Emotion, in the process of language acquisition, means the learners’ sentiment, sensation, mood, and manner and so on (Anita Woolfolk, 2003). We can generally divide emotions into two aspects: the positive emotions and the negative ones. The study of emotional factors in English teaching focuses on the main problem that what emotions affect the students positively and what negatively.
Psychology shows that human’s behaviors will be affected most by their own emotions. Generally speaking, the positive emotions will facilitate their progress. However, on the contrary, the negative emotions will slow down or even stop their success. So is it in the process of language acquisition.
1. The positive emotions
Here, it includes the following emotions, such as self-esteem, confidence, motivation, happiness and so on. The positive emotions in language acquisition can boost the study of the students. Self-esteem will make one person never want to be backward. It will stimulate his/her work. It provides enough time and energy for language acquisition. Confidence is a very important factor in language learning, especially the second language learning like English to us. Language is learned to communicate, to express the mind, etc. With the confidence, one can be brave enough to open his/her mouth to achieve the goal. And just by doing this, he/she can have the chance to find mistakes, and then to make progress. Motivation makes the learner to be active in study. It is just like the engine to a machine. No motivation, no impetus. And happiness provides interest and relaxed feeling. These are also the basic points of language learning. In English teaching, teachers should make full use of the passive emotions to boost the study of the students.
2. The negative emotions
In the process of language acquisition, at the same time, there are a few negative emotions which will delay or even stop one’s success in study such as anxiety, fear, shyness, depression, abomination, etc. Anxiety and fear will spoil the interest of the students in language acquisition. However, shyness can make one miss the chance to show oneself or build one’s confidence up. Depression will extinguish one’s enthusiasm in study. Then he/she will never have the impetus. Abomination is a big enemy to the study of anything. With it, a person will never come near to the thing itself. Just like these emotions, teachers should try to keep away from the students’ language learning.
However both of these emotions will everybody have. In education, teachers should try to infiltrate the positive emotions instead of the negative ones, in order to boost the progress of the study. Then it becomes more important for teachers to infiltrate emotional factors well. Therefore it asks teachers know not only the aspect of emotional factors, but also the other: its target-the students.
Emotional factors will affect people’s study greatly in language acquisition, especially to the middle school students who are in a special period of their growing-up.
B. The features of the middle school students
During the years of middle school, the students are all at the period of adolescence. At this period, they have some special features which will influence their future greatly. So it is important time to educate them comprehensively.
1. The enhancing of their self-consciousness
Self-consciousness means one’s understanding to his/her behaviors, positions and functions in the society (Zheng Hejiu, 1993). With their growing, the world in teenagers’ eyes will be of great difference from it was in the childhood. While changes happen in the aspects of their physiological features, the ones of their mentality also change greatly. To self-consciousness, if we can say it’s just like a piece of blank paper of children’s self-consciousness, an ordered colorful picture of adults’, then it will be an unrecognized draft with varied pigments of teenager’s self-consciousness.
At the period of adolescence, the teenager’s self-consciousness will be enhanced quickly. Generally it shows from the following aspects:
I.The progress of their independence
I.The breakup of their self-consciousness
I.The strong mind on the developing of their characters
I.The maturation of their self-evaluation
I.The high self-esteem
2. The rich but active sentiments
While they are teenagers, the students’ sentiment gradually becomes rich, active, sensitive, the same time, unstable. They are easy to be swayed by one’s emotions. When they feel wronged, sad or unsatisfied while facing contradiction in life, they will quarrel with each other, get angry without deep thinking. The teenagers’ sentiments have already been separated from the childish ones. They gradually come to high and social instead of the low, na?ve and primeval emotional acts. Therefore, this period is just the right time to infiltrate emotional education. It is helpful not only to their language study, but also to their forming of their characters.
3. Quick minded but weak perseverance
Teenagers have the quick-growing ability on imagination, speculation, summarization, logic and creation. Their thought pattern begins to develop in full scale with rich imaginative power and great attention. They are sensitive to new things. And also they have strong ability of acceptance. With sensitive reaction, strong ability of operating, active thoughts and healthy mentality, added with good surroundings of study and education, it is sure that the students can grow into useful persons. But at this period, the students are lack of discrimination to things. And they are not very clear to the aim of the study. So, with the study, they like to work according to their interests. The result is that the enthusiasm won’t stay long. Because of their unstable willingness of study, they are easy to do things like hating, fearing, or even skipping school. Therefore, it is very important time to guide them patiently with emotional education in teaching.
4. Self-confirmation and self-rejection
Generally speaking, the teenagers are mostly self-confirmed. They like their own personalities. T o their abilities, they can evaluate themselves practically. Also they can recognize themselves from both sides. They will find out their merits and demerits. At the same time, they are able to give right attitude to their failures in thinking them as the mother of success.
On the other hand, there is self-rejection in the mind of the teenagers. Such as disagreeing with, looking down upon and doubting himself/herself. The reason to the cause of self-rejection is that they set their goal too high. So it is very important for the teachers to teach them to be practical.
There are still many other special features of the students at the period of adolescence. According to the students’ special features at the special period, the teachers’ carrying on the emotional infiltration in English teaching can cause the students’ factors of cognition and emotion. And also the class will obtain the harmony and the unification. So how to use emotional factors will profoundly influence the students’ study, also directly and indirectly in the formation of their characters at their teenage.
Ⅲ. Infiltrate emotional factors well in English teaching
It is good for the students to learn actively and be engaged in their English study. However in fact, quite a few students are lack of motivation and self-confidence in language study. Their behaviors, such as skipping school, coping with the teachers, fearing and in differencing on examinations, etc, show their disgust on English study. The essential reason is the students’ lack of interest and enthusiasm in their English learning.
Emotional factor should be well coordinated during the process of English learning. Therefore, it can bring out the students’ cognition and emotion, and will also obtain the harmony and the unification in class.
During the process of emotional education, our teacher can infiltrate emotional factor in the following ways:
A. To be friendly to make them relaxed
It is very important for the students to be relaxed during their study of English. Active, relaxed and confidence emotions are beneficial to the language acquisition. Otherwise, it will hinder the progress of language learning. So it is very important for the teachers’ attitudes to the students. For this, the teachers should be friendly with the students. Make good impressions on the students by facial expression, manners, and qualities even clothing. The teacher can say hello to the students in English with energetic, cheerful smile on the face when he/she enters the classroom. In this way, the students will feel close to the teacher. And then they can make friends with each other. With the friendship in class, not only the teachers, but also the students can work freely. Then in English learning, the students can be easy to read, talk write and perform. It is greatly good for the students to be active in class. The care and friendship between the teachers and the students can make the class vivid, relaxed and interesting.
B. To let out the emotion to excite the students’ interests
In the process of language acquisition, interest and enthusiasm are the supporters of the study to learners. So in English teaching, the teachers should let out their emotions to excite the students’ study interests, and to stimulate the students’ enthusiasm. According to educational psychology, to transmit the positive anticipation to one person can make him/her to make progress very quickly and develop better. Otherwise, to transmit the negative anticipation to one person will lead him/her to give up studying hard. The teaching is a bilateral activity for both teaching and studying. The teacher with enthusiasm stirs the students’ study interests. And the students’ interests affect in turn teacher’s enthusiasm. If we talk about the question of the students’ interests and enthusiasm, the teacher’s emotion is one of the best methods. Therefore, teachers should stimulate the students’ enthusiasm by their enthusiasm themselves. Only to combine two emotions, it can achieve a goal of the students’ taking part in class actively.
C. T o cultivate motivation
For language acquisition, whether the classroom atmosphere is helpful or not affects greatly. The classroom atmosphere is depended on emotional relations between the teachers and the students. And the understanding and care from the teachers may not only better the relationship, burs also create significant education effect in the classroom. If the teacher dominates the students’ thoughts, attitudes and emotions in class, he/she will make the students passive and negative. The teacher has to care about the students themselves and also their existing problems all the time, and treat them equally. For example, the teacher should remember the students’ names in a short time when he/she contacted with a group of new students. In this way, the students will feel good for obtaining love from their teacher. Besides this, the teacher should know the students’ backgrounds well. Also, for the teacher, he/she should usually communicate with the students. They should check the students’ work carefully. They should give advice or opinions to the students and help them solve the problems appearing in students’ work. They should give enough praise to the students.
And in order to promote understanding with each other, the teacher should make the students write suggestions about lessons and contents of the lessons in English frequently and so on. In this way, it can not only improve the students’ writing skill and get feed back from the students, but also provide more free space for the communication to both of them. Otherwise, if a teacher treats the students indifferently, and even looks down upon the students, it will bring about tense atmosphere and restrict the students’ interest and desire for knowledge.
For this, there is a fable as we all know. The north wind and the south wind make a bet on who can take off pedestrian’s coat. The north wind blows fiercely while the more fiercely it blows; the more tightly the pedestrian binds his coat. On the contrary, when the warm and comfortable south wind blows, the pedestrian unconsciously takes off his coat. The south wind wins because he complied with person’s needs to make person’s behavior change on change of his psychology which is called “south wind effect”.
From the fable, we know that the teacher has to adopt the methods according to the students’ true needs after he/she awares of the difference among the students in character. By this, not only the students’ studying desire can be satisfied, but also the harmonious joyful study atmosphere can be set up. The most important thing is that the students will love English learning.
D. To encourage the students.
Emotion is the main motivation for the students to study in language acquisition. An active appraisal can not only promote the emotional communication between teachers and the students, but also improve the effect of class and quality of teaching. While in teaching: first, appraisals are mainly focused on the encouragement. Some students dare not open their mouths to speak English in class owing to the fear of making mistakes or the fear of the teachers’ criticizing .Therefore, the English teacher should help them to get rid of the fearful mind and encourage them to open their mouths to speak English in class. Then the teacher should pay more attention to the emotional factors of their tunes, because they will have influence on the studying mood of the students. Generally, most students are all fond of the teacher’s kind tune to praise them, because they will have a sense of pride. Still the teacher should keep a tolerable attitude to the students. Even though the students are at the same age, the intelligent developments between them are somewhat different. Some are quick-minded students who can infer other things from one fact; but others are a bit slow ones who are always make mistakes. In this situation, the teacher should be kind-hearted to the latter students, trying to find out their merit, and protect their self-esteem. And also the teacher should use different kinds of appraisals. Students want to gain the praise not only from the teachers but also from their classmates. Through both of encouragement they can get the sense of achievements. Therefore, the teacher should satisfy the needs of their students, pay attention to their little progress give their approval and praise in time, and make every student feel his/her success. Proper praise and encouragement are the spurs to the students, and an active teaching method, too. It indicates that praise and encouragement are the active motivations to stimulate the students’ initiation, and they will improve their understanding ability.
Apart from these, the teacher should still affix many other methods in order to infiltrate emotional factors well. Such as taking notice on the active factors of the students and then to guide them, giving ingenious desire of a class, etc, carrying on the emotional infiltration well, it can let the students have free rein to their own-development, and can stimulate their positive factors to study, improve the effect of the class and quality of teaching. In all, the emotional factors ask for the teachers’ great attention, not only for English, but also for other courses.
Ⅳ. Conclusion
With the new reform, the society requires the developing of every aspect: industry, agriculture, and education. Among these, education takes the first place. Without good education, there wasn’t a crane in industry. Without good education, there wasn’t in agriculture. And without good education, our Chinese couldn’t communicate with the world, couldn’t develop ourselves. Now emotional factors have already shown their great importance in the education today. For teachers, there are huge to infiltrate emotional education well. Especially to the middle school students who are just at the period of adolescence, teachers should pay more attention on educating them. According to their special features, well-use the emotional factors in teaching. It can cause the students’ factors of cognition and emotion, and will obtain the harmony and unification. And they, at last, achieve the aim of improving the effect of class and the quality of teaching. During the process of language acquisition, emotional factors are actually one of the most important factors.
References
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