A Study Of Demotivation Factors Affecting College English Learning For Non-English Majors

Motivation is one of the important factors affecting English learning achievement. However, it is often restricted in many aspects. It is not difficult to find that the English learning motivation of some students is gradually decreased or even lost in the course of English language learning. The previous L2 demotivational research finds many factors leading to learning demotivation but they didn't solve individual motivational problems. It is expected that investigation of this area can find specific factors, which helps teachers to keep and strengthen college students'English learning motivation. In the view of this, the study investigates into the specific factors decreasing college students'English learning motivation in the EFL classroom. The research questions are: (1) What factors trigger the English learning demotivation among the college students? How many factors are related to teachers and students themselves? (2) How seriously do these factors demotivate the students? Which is the dominant factor? (3) How can these demotivating factors be reduced?The participants were 316 college students, who were once demotivated in English learning, from twelve classes in Jilin University, Jilin Agricultural University and Changchun University of Technology. All of them completed a close-ended questionnaire. Twelve groups with twenty-four participants were interviewed. The investigation adopted both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze and study the data with the help of SPSS. The study made the following major findings: (1) there are four aspects of demotivating factors in college English learning; (2) teacher-related factors and student-related ones decrease English learning motivation seriously.According to the analysis of the specific demotivating factor data and the students'suggestions, four aspects of implications and suggestions to the demotivation in the EFL classroom are proposed. Implications of these findings for teachers and learners of English as well as the recommendations for further study are discussed.