A Study Of Demotivating Factors In Non-English-Major Graduate Students' English Learning

Motivation is the people's choice to particular behavior,and it determines their persistent struggle for that choice.Learning motivation is a research focus in second language acquisition,and it has an important impact on the efficiency of language learning.However,as the opposite of motivation,demotivation has adverse effects on learners' learning.Studies have shown that demotivation exists extensively in foreign language acquisition.It not only influences learners' attitudes,behaviors and motivation during their learning process,but also affects the study atmosphere of class,and finally hampers teachers' foreign language teaching.Therefore,it is meaningful to explore and analyze the demotivation in foreign language learning.The study of demotivation is beneficial to reduce its negative influences on learning and teaching,as well as further improve learners' learning efficiency.Current researches mainly take university students as participants,however,researches about graduate students' demotivation and demographic information of demotivating factors are relatively few.This study attempts to investigate the demotivation among non-English-major graduate students by quantitative and qualitative methods,in order to better the situation of demotivation.This thesis aims to explore the following three questions:(1)Does demotivation exist in the non-English-major graduate students' English learning?If it exists,what is the general situation of graduate students' demotivation?(2)What are the factors that contribute to the non-English-major graduate students' demotivation in English learning?(3)Are there any differences in demotivating factors in terms of graduate students' major,gender and demotivation degree?This study takes 207 non-English-major graduate students from Shandong Normal University as participants,and then adopts questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to collect data.The data collected from this research is analyzed by SPSS 22.0,and semi-structured interviews are transcribed by the author.The study results are as follows:(1)The demotivation in English learning is common among graduate students;(2)Thisthesis extracts five types of demotivating factors,including teacher-related factors,course-related factors,learning environment-related factors,student-related factors and peer-related factors;(3)There are significant differences in some demotivating factors in terms of students' major,gender and demotivation degree.The science students are more sensitive to course-related factors.Male students are more susceptible to student-related factors,while teacher-related factors have a great impact on female students.Students with higher degree of demotivation are affected to a larger extent by course-related factors,learning environment-related factors,student-related factors and peer-related factors.According to the results of this study,some feasible suggestions can be put forward to teachers,students,course designers and schools to improve learners' motivation.Finally,the limitations of this study and suggestions for further study are pointed out.