A Study Of Demotivation In College EFL Classrooms In China

As one of the most initiative factors of individual differences, motivation has already become the main issue in SLA field. However, current motivation studies attach great importance to positive influences of motivation while few scholars have conducted motivation researches from negative perspectives. Although scholars and classroom practitioners can easily detect that some learners gradually lose their interests or motivation in EFL learning, demotivation is still a relatively new issue. Demotivation is defined as motivation reduction caused by negative influences of external factors as well as internal factors in this thesis. Demotivation studies have developed for over two decades since 1990, whereas most researches are descriptive in order to illustrate demotivating factors perceived by students by using quantitative technique or qualitative technique. Few studies explore demotivation attribution from the perspective of individual differences.This thesis aims at investigating current demotivation situation and demotivation attribution in college EFL classrooms, thereafter exploring differences in demotivation attribution among learners with different genders, disciplines and English proficiency levels. 479 sophomores from Huazhong University of Science and Technology comprise the sample. They are divided into three English proficiency levels (L1, L2 and L3). Meanwhile, Demotivation degree test is designed to evaluate learners'demotivation degree in an objective way while demotivation attribution questionnaire is constructed to extract demotivating factors from three levels, i.e. teacher-related factors, learner-related factors and learning environment-related factors. Besides, the author also interviews demotivated learners and English teachers so as to present an overall picture of demotivation in college EFL classrooms.The result shows that demotivation is a common phenomenon in college EFL classrooms, where demotivation distribution differs a lot among different disciplines and English proficiency levels. Meanwhile, the result of demotivation degree test shows that most demotivated learners have experienced low and intermediate demotivation. It is worth noticing that higher proficiency group tend to suffer from lower demotivation. Demotivating factors extracted from the study are listed according to their demotivating effects in a descending way: School environment, Unfavorable experience in EFL learning, Coursebook, Learner's affective state, Negative attitude towards EFL learning, Teacher competence, Teaching style and method, Class environment and Teacher characteristic and commitment. The result shows that teacher-related factors are less demotivating compared with other factors, which is not consistent with the result of previous studies. Besides, there exist distinctive differences in demotivation attribution among learners with different genders, disciplines and English proficiency levels.