A Study Of Demotivating Factors In Adult Students' EFL Learning

It is known to all that motivation, as the most important learner factor, is considered to attribute greatly to language learning achievement. The importance of motivation results in abundant studies in this field. By contrast, less attention has been paid to the research of demotivation which is defined as specific external forces that reduce or diminish the motivational basis of a behavioral intention or an ongoing action. Motivation stimulates learners to learn and to work hard and encourages them to persist in their studies; whereas demotivation tends to induce passivity, giving up, and a lack of receptivity to new learning experiences. The previous research on motivation suggested that conventional motivation theories may not provide enough practical tools for teachers to help students overcome any lack of motivation, while research on demotivation can be seen as a logical extension of the research paradigm to look at the negative impact of certain factors and offer some implications for language teaching and learning. For such reasons, it may be worth examining the phenomenon of demotivation in greater depth. This thesis attempts to explore the existing demotivating factors in adult students'(mainly adult education students studying full-time release) English language learning so as to seek corresponding strategies for motivating the demotivated students in their English learning.The research applies both quantitative and qualitative approaches to find out answers to the three research questions. In this thesis, the quantitative method is used to examine the overall demotivational factors of adult students and differences between the more motivated and the less motivated students in terms of their attitude towards the influences of each demotivational factor, and their responses towards demotivation when they are influenced by it. The results indicate that motivation intensity of adult students is quite low, adult students are influenced by the four demotivating factors employed in the questionnaire, and the sequence of influence of demotivational factors is contrary to the former researches in that teacher-related variables are not the demotivating factor most detrimental to students'English language learning, while learners'reduced self-confidence is considered to be the most detrimental factor in adult students'language learning, followed by factor of teaching environment. Data analysis also reflects significant differences between the motivated students and the demotivated students in terms of their attitude about the influence of the demotivating factors. Significant differences exist in their responses towards demotivation as well. The qualitative statistics generalized from interview transcripts and content analysis provide complementary illustration for the quantitative statistics and indicate that demotivational factors in adult students'English learning may generate from diverse sources. The demotivated students tend to take more passive responses towards demotivation which makes it difficult to change than the motivated students.This thesis is composed of six chapters. To be more specific, it spreads out as follows:Chapter one is an introduction which provides an overview of the whole thesis including a general description about the background of the research, the significance of the research in this thesis, and the organization of this thesis.Chapter two is a review of the theoretical background of motivation and demotivation, a brief summary of the previous research on demotivation at home and abroad, and the remaining problems in dealing with the demotivation in the EFL classroom.Chapter three introduces the methodology of the empirical study. The purpose and testing context are explained first. It reveals in this chapter the selection of subjects, the formation of the questionnaires and the interview which are used to investigate the situation of students'being demotivated, and the procedure of data collection. The collected data will be analyzed by the instruments of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS).Chapter four deals with the research results related to the three research problems. The discussion of the results based on the former analysis will be provided in this chapter as well:the demotivating factors in English class for Chinese adult students, the differences between the motivated and the demotivated learners in terms of the influence of demotivating factors, and the different responses of them when they are influenced by the demotivating factors.Chapter five provides strategies for motivating the demotivated students from the individual level and the contextual level.Chapter six serves as the conclusion, in which the significance of this study is summarized. The thesis also discusses the limitation in terms of research method and process in this study, which provides some recommendations for further study in this field.