| Demotivation is a comparatively new issue in the field of second/foreignlanguage learning motivation research. However, most previous studies concentratedon the demotivation phenomena of non-English major college students, neglecting thedemotivation situation of English majors who were considered to be highly motivatedand less likely to suffer from demotivation in English learning. Given this point, byusing a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, this study took499English major undergraduates, from two universities of different levels in Xuzhou,Jiangsu Province, as subjects and investigated the degree of demotivation, exploredunderlying demotivating factors, compared the differences of demotivating factorsbetween more motivated learners and less motivated learners, and proposedcorresponding pedagogical implications as well as some learning advice for students.The findings of present study are as the following：1) Demotivation is a common phenomenon among English majorundergraduates;2) The salient demotivating factors perceived by English major undergraduatesare Teacher, Unsuccessful Learning Experience, Autonomy, Learning Difficulty,Assignment and Examination, Inadequate School Facilities, and Course Book, amongwhich, Teacher is significantly less demotivating and Learning Difficulty issignificantly more demotivating.3) There exists a significant interaction effect between English majorundergraduates’ motivation level and the seven demotivating factor: except forInadequate School Facilities, less motivated learners considered other sixdemotivating factors significantly more demotivating than more motivated learnersdid. For more motivated learners, two demotivating factors were significantlydifferent from other factors-Teacher (the least demotivating one) and LearningDifficulty (the most demotivating one); for less motivated learners, the leastdemotivating factors was Teacher, which was significantly salient than the otherfactors. |
PDF Full Text Request