A Study On The Current Situation And Influencing Factors Of English Learning Demotivation Of Senior High School Students

Motivation,as one of the key factors in second language learning,has always been the focus of experts and scholars at home and abroad.However,there are not only positive forces but also negative forces that influence learners’ learning behavior.Demotivation makes a difference in learners’ behaviors and hinders the acquisition of the knowledge of the foreign language.At present,it is a common problem of students’ English learning demotivation in senior high school,which indicates that there is an urgent need for more studies in the field.Through understanding students’ English learning situation,the study attempts to explore the demotivating factors affecting students’ foreign language learning and find the corresponding solutions to avoid the demotivation or reduce the impact of demotivation on students,so as to provide references for improving the English learning status of senior high school students.Based on the success or failure attribution theory,D(?)rnyei’s three-level theory of motivation and the expected value theory,questionnaires and interviews are used in this research to carry out more in-depth research of the phenomenon of the English learning demotivation of Grade One students in a senior high school of a country in southern Shanxi Province.The thesis attempts to find out the demotivating factors of senior high school students in English learning and to seek out some measures to retard the process of the students’ English learning demotivation.There are three research questions in the thesis:(1)What is the current situation of the senior high school students’ English learning demotivation?(2)What factors cause students’ demotivation and how do they rank?(3)Is there any difference of students’ English learning demotivation in senior high school in different genders? If there is,what are the differences?Firstly,the questionnaire survey was conducted among 209 students.SPSS 26.0was used for data analysis.The demotivation and influencing factors of students were analyzed by descriptive statistics,and the differences on the demotivating factors of different genders were analyzed by independent samples t-test.Secondly,18 students and 6 teachers were interviewed to complement the results of the questionnaires and to expound the other possible demotivating factors and measures to retard the process of demotivation.From the research results of the questionnaires and the interviews,these conclusions can be found:(1)the phenomenon of the demotivation of the senior high school students is relatively common.(2)By means of principal component factor analysis,the following five demotivating factors were found,namely,learner-related factors,teacher-related factors,environment-related factors,curriculum-related factors and textbook-related factors.According to the degree of influence,the sequencing order of the five factors is as follows.Environment-related factors,learner-related factors,teacher-related factors,textbook-related factors and curriculum-related factors.(3)There is significant difference between boys and girls of the curriculum-related factors.And there is no significant difference between boys and girls among the other four kinds of the factors.Finally,based on the results of the thesis,the author puts forward the corresponding measures and strategies to retard the process of students’ demotivation from the aspects of learners,teachers,environment,curriculum and textbooks.The author hopes to provide students with some help,and puts forward some enlightenment to teachers in English teaching.Through carrying out the research,the author also hopes that teachers can find some measures to improve the effectiveness of English teaching and improve the students’ English academic performance.The limitations of the thesis are the relatively small sample size and the changing nature of students’ motivation.Future studies can adopt more methods to obtain more comprehensive and accurate results.