A Dynamic Experimental Research On English Majors’learning Demotivation

In second or foreign language learning process, learners’ motivations can beimpacted by numerous factors and the passive factors tend to have more evidenteffects on learners. As observed by teachers that learners might show demotivationphenomena to various extents and even part of them might reveal total motivationextinction. The research is designed to investigate learners’ English learningdemotivation phenomena. Demotivation in the thesis refers to the phenomena oflearners’ motivation decreasing and of failure in positive motivation stimulation,including both internal passive factors and external negative factors. Demotivatingfactors exist extensively during English learning procedure, which is worth scholars’attention. In Comparison with motivation researches, demotivation researches beginlate and have relatively less research results that exist mainly in America, west Europeand Japan.In China’s demotivation research field, demotivation researches are lackinggreatly both in quantity and in quality. The published outcomes are mainly focused onprincipal factors extraction and cause-effect models building, according to theanalysis of literature review. However demotivation progressing chronologically hasseldom been paid attention to according to literature reviews for Chinese publisheddemotivation researches. Based on the previous researches, this study takes a dynamicperspective not only to probe the learners’ English learning demotivationdevelopment tendency but also to conclude the principal demotivating factors thatwill be marked as demotivators in the research, as well as the influence force of theprincipal demotivators at different stages. The purpose of the present study is toinvestigate the concealed progression involved in demotivation to assist in guidingpolicymakers, concerned administrators, and teachers to minimize the negative effectsfrom demotivation. The research studies the demotivation phenomena of freshmen whose major isEnglish from a university for a year. Surveys were launched with58，49and44learners at the three stages respectively using questionnaires (37learners participatedall the three stages’ surveys) and with part of the participants and teachers usinginterviews. The research discovers the following principal demotivators:communication-environment factor, future-career factor, teacher factor, self factor,class factor, textbook factor, auxiliary equipment factor and goal factor. Threedemotivators of greatest influence at three stages are identified as teacher factor,environment factor and future-career factor respectively. The study testifies thatdemotivation is dynamic, which is proved by the following three phenomena: first, themain factors at the three stages are different; second, the number of demotivatedlearners is different at the three stages and third, learners’ demotivation developmenttendency is different with mainly six major development types: positive-stable-type,passive-stable-type, U-type, reverted-U-type, rising-type and falling-type.As the study outcomes show, the learners’ demotivation is not static but varieswith correlation with context. The demotivators at the three stages demonstratediverse hierarchies of influence at different levels and form various developmentmodels. Considering avoiding learners’ demotivation phenomena and keeping themhighly motivated, teachers might adjust their teaching strategies according to differentfeatures of demotivation phenomena at different stages, and the feature of the wholedemotivation development tendency that learners show during their English learningprocess.