A Study Of Demotivating Factors In Art College Students’ English Learning

Learning motivation is regarded as an important factor in Second Language Acquisition/SLA and attributes a lot to learning achievement. It decides the enthusiasm, persistence and participation of the language learners. Much study has been carried out on learning motivation abroad and at home, making a lot of achievements. However, previous researches mainly focused on the definitions, classifications of motivation, which can help us to better understand motivation and stimulate learners’learning motivation.With the further study on motivation, more attention is paid on the reduction and loss of motivation (demotivation), which leads to passivity and even giving up in language learning process. In the last decades, scholars abroad have identified some certain factors which result in demotivation. In recent years, some Chinese scholars have started to do some researches on demotivation in English learning among Chinese students. They found that demotivation in English learning influenced Chinese college students, especially the non-English majors. Art college students are a special group among the non-English majors, for most of them have a poor command of English and more attention is paid to their specialized courses. So the demotivation in English learning among art college students may be different from other non-English majors. However, study on demotivation among art college students is relatively rare in English learning researches.Therefore, after a thorough study and review on different motivation theories, this study is conducted. This thesis centers on demotivation and demotivating factors in English learning among art college students. This thesis tries to answer following research questions:1) Is there a demotivation phenomenon in English learning among the art college students? How serious is it?2) What are the major demotivating factors?3) How to reduce the demotivation in English learning?In the study, both quantitative and qualitative methods were applied to ascertain the phenomenon of demotivation and demotivating factors.188sophomores of art majors from Huangshan University, with102females and86males, were required to do the questionnaire. All of the statistics were computed and analyzed by SPSS19.0. Demotivation and seven broad categories of demotivating factors in English learning were obtained. Further attribution analysis was adopted to get the most important demotivating factors. After the questionnaire,12demotivated students (among the participants) and6course teachers were interviewed. Their responses confirmed the research results and some methods that can reduce demotivation in English learning can be concluded.On the basis of the data analysis, the major findings can be summarized as follows:1) The demotivation among art college students is common and serious.2) Seven broad categories of demotivating factors can be obtained through a principal axis factor analysis. They are (a) Course-related factors;(b) Teacher-related factors;(c) Experience of failure;(d) Learning environment;(e) Learning materials;(f) Lack of interest;(g) Culture-related factors. Teacher-related factors, experience of failure, learning materials and lack of interest are the four dominant demotivating factors.3) Different methods can be used to reduce demotivation in English learning. For the teachers, teachers’personalities should be improved, teaching methods should be reformed, teaching abilities should be strengthened and diversified class activities should be organized. All of these methods can increase students’learning motivation and reduce their demotivation. For the students, raising self-confidence, setting learning goals, developing self-learning ability and improving learning efficiency are effective methods to reduce demotivation.