初中英语口语教学之非智力因素概述

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Significance of the Study
Intellectual factors and nonintellectual factors are the important factors that affectstudents’ grades, even play a decisive role in the success of the future career. If we comparethe intellectual factor to seeds, the nonintellectual factor will be soil. Good seeds only thrivein fertile soil, so neither of the two factors should be ignored (Arends, Richard I, 2005:439).But in actual life, parents and teachers only pay attention to develop students' intelligence,ignoring the functions of nonintellectual factors. In fact, the study of nonintellectual factorshas a profoundly social and practical significance. The following parts will discuss thesignificance of nonintellectual factors from macro and micro aspects. Traditional concept of education only stresses the influence of intellectual factors onlearning, ignores the effects of nonintellectual factors on knowledge acquisition. In educationreform, first of all, nonintellectual factors should be introduced into it, training students for awide range of interest, improving the ability of solving practical problems, and developingtenacious characters. Therefore, it is an important strategy to develop students' nonintellectualfactors in the process of education reform.Continuing to carry out quality education is an important theme of fundamentaleducation in China. Therefore, attaching importance to and strengthening the students'nonintellectual factors, not only are the important content of new curriculum, but also becomean inevitable requirement of quality education as well as a problem that our country’selementary education reform must pay attention to.
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1.2 Background of the Research
Since 1990s, the tendency of political multiplicity and economic globalization wasgetting clear day by day. Recently, facing the urgent demand of economic globalization,learning English has become an inevitable trend. After joining the World Trade Organizationin 2001 and successfully holding the 29thOlympic Games in Beijing, a growing number ofpeople begin to learn English. Besides, English is consistent through the nine-yearcompulsory education. Learners are getting younger and younger and English even become arequired course in primary school. In the eyes of many parents, mastery of English is deemedas a shortcut to success in the future.According to the reality, although English has already gained popularity in China, thereare still a lot of common problems unsolved in English teaching and learning. TraditionalEnglish teaching only put emphasis on acquisition of knowledge, ignoring the functions ofsome important factors, such as interest、motivation、affect, etc. For example, some studentscannot get systematic knowledge; others don’t have good or firm mastery of fundamentalknowledge of English. They lake abilities to use English in practice and feel it is difficult tolearn English very well. Usually, some students fall into a process in which they curious aboutEnglish and are interested in it at first, then, they lose curiosity and interest gradually. Whenmeeting difficulties or gaining low scores, they lose confidence and then they loathe English.What’ more, there exists the phenomenon of extreme polarization in a class, that is to say, inthe same class, some students make progress rapidly and learn it very well while others makevery little progress and perform not so well in it.
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Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Researches on Nonintellectual Factors Abroad
The study of intelligence is far earlier than that of nonintellectual factors. Since 5thcentury, people have started to do some researches on intelligence. Philosophers at that timeused words such as "wit" "gift" to express the meaning of wisdom. Plato, one of the greatestphilosophers of ancient Greece, had many views of wisdom. He stressed that wisdom was animportant aspect of learning ability. Aristotle thought that intelligence was the differencebetween different social strata, and it was also a precious gift unequally given by God. In the18th century, Kant, the famous philosopher, proposed in Critique of Pure Reason thatintelligence was a high-level cognitive ability, which included three aspects: understandingability, judgment ability and reference ability. In the late 19th century, philosopher Spencerand biologists Galton proposed the term "intelligence", which firstly represented innatecharacteristic and tendency. In 1904, C. E. Spearman, the British psychologist and the fatherof factor analysis, proposed two factor theory, namely the 'G' factors (common factors) and 'S'factors (special factors). L.T Hurston held that intellectual activities consist of many originalfactors or the original abilities which were unrelated with each other. Thurston designed thebasic intelligence test to measure 7 kinds of main factors that generalized from 56 kinds oftests (Pi Liansheng, 2004).
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2.2 Researches on Nonintellectual Factors in China
Let’s go back to the Spring and Autumn Period, Confucius, one of the greatest sages,once said that you may be able to carry off the commander from an army, but you cannot takeaway the will of a common folk. As another saying goes, curiosity is more important thanknowledge itself, and interest is even more important than pure curiosity. Obviously,nonintellectual factors also have the embodiment in the Analects of Confucius in China.With the reform and opening in China, we gradually realize the facts that the westernersattach great importance to developing students' intelligence, so an upsurge of intelligencedevelopment is set off. But during that time, the reality put forward such serious problems tous, that is, is a student with high intelligence certain to study very well? Or will he or she besuccessful? The answers are no. These questions force scientists to think about a fact that thesuccess of a student, in addition to intelligence, must have some correlation with other factors.Only combining intelligence with those unfamiliar factors can a student achieve success. Theconcepts of nonintellectual factors are put forward in such a background.
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Chapter Three Theoretical Framework.... 17
3.1 Humanistic Psychology..... 17
3.2 Humanistic Psychology’s View on Education....... 18
Chapter Four Research Design...... 21
4.1 Research Questions ..... 21
4.2 Objectives........ 21
4.3 Subjects ..... 22
4.4 Instruments ...... 22
4.5 Research Procedure ..... 24
4.6 Data Collection...... 26
Chapter Five Results and Discussion ........ 29
5.1 The Effective Strategies of Oral English Teaching ..... 29
5.2 Data Analysis of Questionnaires ......... 33
5.3 Data Analysis of Tests ....... 40
5.4 Data Analysis of assignments....... 45

Chapter Five Results and Discussion

5.1 The Effective Strategies of Oral English Teaching
English Curriculum Standards have clearly demanded that junior high school studentsshould have certain learning motivation and active attitudes toward oral English learning; theyshould understand what teacher talks about and actively participate in the discussions whichthey are familiar with; they are expected to exchange information with others about thevarious topics in daily life and put forward their own point of view; students are expected tospeak English with nature pronunciation and intonation (Sun Yonghua, 2006,(2):51). However,in daily life, due to the inappropriate learning strategies, dumb English is become more andmore common, which seriously lead to the fact that many of students lose interest andconfidence in studying, some of which even give up learning.In order to arouse students’ learning interest, stimulate learning motivation, and formgood learning habits, the author attempts to put forward some effective strategies of oralEnglish teaching. In thismanner, students will regard English learning as their own requirements and they are ready tostudy hard. For instance, when I taught a listening material called English Is Used All OverThe World in Grade 8, after summarizing and explaining the importance of English fromdifferent perspectives, I let students in Class 1 (Experimental class) have a deep debate aboutthe universality of English using from their practical life and what they have seen and heard.Through the study like this can let students realize the importance of English learning fromthe real life. Meanwhile, students’ learning interest has been aroused and their learningmotivation is also internalized.

Conclusion

This chapter summarizes the major findings in the study and presents the relationshipbetween nonintellectual factorsand junior high school students’ oral English teaching.Through the deep analysis of junior high school students’ nonintellectual factors, the authoradopts the questionnaires, tests, and assignments to test whether the experimental teachingcan arouse students’ learning interest, stimulate their learning motivation, and form goodlearning habits, etc. Firstly, the author summarizes the major findings of experimentalteaching, then point out some limitations of this study. At last, the author attempts to makesome suggestions for further study of junior high school students’ nonintellectual factors. After a term of experimental teaching, the author find that the reform of oral Englishteaching in experimental class is an effective try, which have obvious effects on students’spoken English. The experimental teaching not only deepens teachers’ and students’understanding of nonintellectual factors, but also improves students’ English test scores andthe mastery of spoken English. In addition, the application of strategies in oral Englishteaching could markedly arouse students’ learning interest, stimulate their learning motivation,and form good learning habits, etc.
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Reference (omitted)