A Study On Demotivating Factors In Secondary Vocational School Students’ EFL Learning

Demotivation refers to the decrease of learners’ initial motivations for learning an L2 caused by either internal or external factors. Since motivation is one of the main determinants of SLA achievements, the exploration of learners’ demotivation is of great importance. However, as quite a few scholars concentrate on motivation-stimulating research, demotivation has not received much attention and there exist few related studies, among which studies on secondary vocational school (SVS) students are rarely seen.Against such a research background, this study, which was based on expectancy-value theory, Dornyei’s motivation theory and Deci and Ryan’s self-determination theory, was designed to identify the demotivating factors in SVS students’ EFL learning, with the knowledge of which teachers can help students get rid of these negative forces and restore their motivation for English learning. For this purpose, this study seeks to answer the following questions:1) What are the demotivating factors in SVS students’ EFL learning?2) What are the differences in demotivating factors between high-level and low-level students?3) What are the causes of these differences between high-level and low-level students?Both quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted to address the questions above. Based on Li’s (2014) questionnaire and the information from 50 students’ retrospective compositions about demotivation, a closed questionnaire was designed to conduct the quantitative study. The questionnaires were distributed to 164 students from five classes in a SVS located in Yangzhou.124 valid questionnaires were gathered eventually. The data was then processed through SPSS 16.0 for further analysis. For the qualitative part, a semi-structured interview was carried out among three high-level (HL) and three low-level (LL) students, all of whom reported that they have experienced demotivation in EFL learning since their enrollment in SVS.The findings were summarized as follows:Firstly, seven external and four internal factors were extracted as the demotivating factors in SVS students’ EFL learning. To be specific, inadequate teaching facility, teaching material, unhappy learning experience, teaching method, classroom environment, peer influence and teacher (in descent order) were identified as the external factors. Career orientation, lack of effective learning strategies, English aptitude and lack of intrinsic motivation (in descent order) were found as the internal factors.Secondly, significant differences between HL and LL students were found in five demotivating factors:teacher, lack of effective learning strategies, English aptitude, lack of intrinsic motivation and classroom environment. In terms of external factors, HL students were found to be more demotivated than LL students by teacher and classroom environment. As to internal factors, LL students were found to be more demotivated than their HL counterparts by lack of effective learning strategies, English aptitude and lack of intrinsic motivation.Thirdly, with regard to teacher and classroom environment, it is due to HL students’high expectancy of these two factors that they were more demotivated by them than LL students. In terms of the other three factors, it is because of LL students’ poor English foundation, few awareness and use of learning strategies and few intrinsic motivations that they were more negatively influenced than their HL counterparts.Based on the findings above, some pedagogical implications were proposed. For administrators, they should first realize that demotivation is a common phenomenon in SVS students’ EFL learning and should take measures to cope with it. Considering that the lack of teaching facility was regarded as the most powerful external factor by SVS students, administrators need to equip schools with modern teaching facilities and encourage teachers to use them in class as often as possible. In terms of teachers, they should realize that most HL students were largely demotivated by external factors (i.e. teacher and classroom environment). Therefore, they should improve their language level, diversify their teaching method and enrich teaching content so as to meet the needs of HL students. Meanwhile, they have to guarantee a relatively quite and comfortable classroom environment, which is conducive to HL students’ learning. When facing LL students, teachers need to incite their intrinsic motivations for learning, as well as to teach and train them for some learning strategies because they were more demotivated by internal factors. Finally, all of the students should raise their awareness of the importance of English and treat English learning earnestly.