A Study On Demotivation In Senior High School Students’ EFL Learning

Motivation is one of the main determinants of second or foreign languagelearning achievement, for which foreign and domestic researchers have conducted aconsiderable amount of research that investigates motivation in L2learning, whereasfew studies have focused on the issue concerning the dark side-demotivation. In theprocess of English teaching, it is not difficult to notice that there are quite a number ofstudents who are gradually decreasing their English learning motivation and thisphenomenon is rather common in the case of the senior high school English learnersas well. The existing motivation theory alone cannot solve the problem for this part oflearners. Although stimulated by widespread demotivation situation in Chinese EFLclassroom, nowadays some researchers have noticed the issue, most of them dig intothis issue from university English learners and few have targeted senior high schoolstudents whose demotivation is apparent and serious as well. It is necessary andsignificant to conduct a systematic research into the issue to get a comprehensiveunderstanding of demotivation for this part of English learners.Thus, this study intends to explore the demotivation issue relating to Chinesesenior high school students. The research questions are:(1) Is demotivation a seriousproblem in EFL learning among present senior high school students?(2) What are thedemotivating factors that discourage senior high school students in the EFL classroomand English learning?(3) Are the demotivating factors different in terms of learners’English proficiency?Both quantitative research and qualitative research are employed in the presentresearch to answer the above three research questions, including a questionnaire andan interview. The subjects for the questionnaire survey are150students from Grade1-3of a senior high school in Nanchang. Semi-structured interview is adopted as wellto verify the results of quantitative research.6students from different grades whowere labeled as demotivated learners take part in the interview.The results of the study show that:1) Demotivation really is a serious problem inEFL learning among present senior high school students.2) There are sevendemotivating factors that discourage senior high school students in foreign languagelearning, including the teacher and the peer, learning content and learning environment, school facilities, learning ability and self-confidence, characteristic ofEnglish classes, non-communicative teaching mode and compulsory nature of Englishlearning, but the last one is regarded not to be a very strong demotivating factor.3)The demotivating factors are different in terms of learners’ English proficiency. Thedifferences are significant in such three factors as the teacher and the peer, learningcontent and learning environment, and school facilities. LP students are moreinfluenced by school facilities. For HP learners, demotivation in EFL learning isinclined to be caused by the teacher, as well as learning content and leaningenvironment.The thesis is composed of six chapters. Chapter One begins with a generalintroduction to the background of the present research, followed by a discussion of thesignificance and aim of the study and the overall structure of the thesis. Chapter Twoelaborates on the demotivation theory detailedly, including definition of demotivation,previous studies of demotivation in the L2domain both aboard and at home. ChapterThree introduces the methodology of this study, including such issues as researchquestions, participants, instruments, data collection and date analysis. Chapter Fourpresents the results of both quantitative and qualitative study which correspond to theresearch questions, as well as discussions about the research. Chapter Five is theconcluding part of the thesis, which summarizes the main findings in the previouschapters, the implications for English teaching and learning, as well as the limitationsof the present study and some suggestions for further research.