Volume 29, Issue 2
DOI: 10.24205/03276716.2020.365
INFLUENCE OF AFFECTIVE FACTORS ON LEARNING ABILITY IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
Abstract
Second language acquisition (SLA) is a complex psychological process. According to educational psychology, the learning outcome of the SLA is greatly influenced by the affective factors of the learner, such as motivation, attitude, anxiety, and empathy, to name but a few. This paper mainly explores how the affective factors influence the learning ability in the SLA. A total of 200 second language learners were selected for the research. By the random number table method, the subjects were divided evenly into four groups: junior high school group, senior high school group, college group, and postgraduate group. Each group has 25 males and 25 females. The learning ability of the subjects were measured by a questionnaire survey, which covers six aspects: learning motivation, attitude, anxiety, empathy, inhibition and personality. Through the analysis on the survey data, it is found that the subjects in different age groups differed greatly in how the affective factors influence the SLA; affective factors greatly impact the cognition of cultural differences by second-language learners; the affective filter hypothesis has important practical significance for the SLA. The research results provide a reference for the teaching design of SLA for different groups of learners.
Keywords
Affective Factors, Second Language Acquisition (SLA), Language Learning, Affective Filter Hypothesis.