A Study On Demotivation Factors In College English

Many factors can influence learner’s English learning process, such as learning style,learning strategy, learning environment, motivation, among which motivation plays a vitalrole in influencing students’ participation, self-consciousness, enthusiasm and persistence.Most researches on motivation in the past centers around positive roles motivation plays inimproving learners’ learning. Some researchers, however, started to pay attention to thenegative part of motivation, i.e., the demotivation, which cases impact upon the learner,who gradually grows bored and disgusted of English learning. Scholars abroad started toidentify certain factors which lead to the distinction of motivation, which is still rarely seenin Chinese language learning researches.Therefore, after a thorough review and analysis of reinforcement theory,expectancy-value theory and attribution theory of motivation and demotivation, the authorstarts a study. This thesis focuses on explaining reasons for demotivation, and providingsolutions to it. The research questions are listed as followed.（1）Does the demotivationphenomenon exist in language learning of college students? What factors cause thisamong college students?（2）Which are the dominant factors?（3）How to reduce thesedemotivated factors?This thesis investigated268college students from Shenyang Normal University.Through analyzing the data by SPSS18.0, we get the nine demotivation factors. Afterfactor analysis, we find five dominant demotivation factors:(1) learner-related factors;(2)teacher-related factors;(3) course-related factors;(4) influence by parents or other people;(5) learning environment factors. At the same time, we can see the importance of theserelevant sub-factors under each dominant factor. Finally, we obtain some overcomingstrategies of demotivation by interviewing learners and their teachers:(1) learner-relatedstrategies: searching for more interesting learning materials by students themselves;practising oral English in English corner; using interesting English movies and TV play series; asking other students or teachers help for improving English learning efficiency.(2)teacher-related strategies: taking more interesting teaching methods; performing morediversified teaching activities and so on.The author summarizes some pedagogical implications based on the results: Studentsneed to raise confidence and improve self-learning by using learning strategies. Teachercan enrich class activities to maintain teaching enthusiasm. They can update learningmaterials. Constructing good English learning environment helps learners to enhance theirintrinsic motivation.