Investigating English Learning Extrinsic And Intrinsic Demotivation Factors In A Vocational School

Quite recently there has seen a surge in research of demotivation in the language acquisition field and it has drawn more attention of language researchers and educationalists,although motivation has long been considered as the most crucial factor that determines the degree or success of second or foreign language learning by a great number of language researchers in the world.The negative effect of demotivation can’t be ignored in the process of language acquisition.Conducting demotivation study is particularly meaningful when those students who have lower achievement in English in vocational schools are involved as research subjects.To get a better understanding of the effect of extrinsic and intrinsic demotivation on vocational school AUM majors’ English learning,two research questions are proposed in this paper:(1)What’s the general level of AUM majors’ English learning demotivation? What are the features of their intrinsic and extrinsic demotivation respectively?(2)What factors lead to AUM majors’ demotivation? Which factors are the most influential and the least influential?159 students from AUM major in a local vocational school in Qujing participate in the present study.All the participants are required to complete questionnaires about English learning motivation and demotivation respectively.Moreover,20 students participate in the interview.Eight demotivation factors that affect students’ English leaning are extracted from the questionnaire investigation.They include four extrinsic factors: “teaching procedure,course books and learning content”,“teacher’s character and teaching competence”,“teaching equipments and classroom environment”,“influences of the outside world”,and four intrinsic factors: “lack of intrinsic motivation”,“failure in learning and lack of self-confidence”,“lack of definite learning goal” and “learning difficulty”.Unlike the findings of the previous investigations,the current study finds that “failure in learning and lack of self-confidence” is the most influential demotivation factor in students’ English study.“Teacher’s character and teaching competence” is the weakest one among all the demotivation factors.Furthermore,the result shows that there is significantdemotivation difference among vocational school students with different English competences.However,no statistical significant differences are identified between students who take part in senior high school entrance exam and those who don’t.According to the information obtained from the interview,the most frequently referred demotivation factor is “prior learning experiences” and “learning difficulty”.There are two more factors emerged from the interviewees’ answers: “lack of learning strategy” and “laziness of students themselves”.Finally in this study,some suggestions are proposed to assist both teachers and students in preventing them from the detrimental influence of demotivation in students’ learning process.Moreover,the findings of this study will offer some help for vocational school’s English teachers as well as designers of English curriculum for vocational schools so as to improve English teaching in the vocational schools.