An Investigation Into Demotivation To Learn English Among Non-English Majors

As one of the most influential factors in the field of second language acquisition(SLA),motivation has been the focus of scholars.However,not only the positive side of motivation but also the negative side of motivation which is called demotivation will affect learners' English learning behavior.Demotivation is prevalent in the process of English learning of non-English majors in China.But domestic research mainly explored the factors that influence the demotivation of college students' English learning from a horizontal perspective,and did not explore the generation mechanism of demotivation from a longitudinal perspective.Directed Motivational Currents(DMCs)emphasize approaching motivation from the diachronic dimension and attach great importance to the combination of motivation and motivation behavior,which provides a new perspective for the study of demotivation to learn English.Therefore,based on DMCs,409 non-English majors were chosen as the research participants to explore their demotivation behaviors as well as the factors that lead to their demotivation in the process of English learning.This study intended to answer the following three questions:(1)What are the overall features of the participants' demotivation to learn English?(2)What is the trajectory of the participants' demotivation to learn English?(3)What are the demotivators for non-English majors to learn English from the perspective of DMCs?This study adopted a mixed-method approach to collect data by combining the quantitative and qualitative methods.The quantitative data were collected by questionnaire and descriptively analyzed through SPSS 22.0.The qualitative data were collected by semi-structured interviews and analyzed by means of content analysis approach to provide complementarities for the quantitative results.It found that: 1)most of the participants have experienced demotivation in the process of English learning;and the participants with relatively low English proficiency were more likely to experience demotivation;in addition,many participants' demotivation to learn English lasted more than four months.2)Overall,there was a fluctuation in the participants' demotivation to learn English.They showed a strong demotivation during summer and winter holidays,and a decrease by the end of the semester and final examinations.As time proceeded,the freshmen underwent a gradual strengthening in their demotivation to learn English,the sophomores and juniors' demotivation being almost consistent with the overall trend of the whole participants,and there being obvious individual differences in the senior students' demotivation to learn English.3)From the perspective of DMCs,lacking of goal/vision,the negative facilitative structure,insufficient participants' ownership and negative emotionality all would lead to demotivation to learn English.Suggestions for remotivating the students were therefore proposed,which is of great significance for future research of DMCs and its application into English learning.Due to the limitations of participant number and time,it is cautioned to generalize the findings of this study.Future research is called with larger research sample and longer time of investigation.