A Study On Demotivation Of University Non-English Major Students For Learning Of English

It is a usual situation that students’ motivation to learn English is diminishing; some even lost their interest in it. Just as Dornyei (2005) proposes, there are both positive and negative forces exerting their influences on student behaviors. And those negative forces are the main factors triggering students’ demotivation in language learning. For decades, the positive aspect of motivation has been an area of intense investigation. However, the negative side of motivation still remains an open issue. But, as Dornyei (2005) indicates, demotivation is prevalent in language classes and the number of demotivated second language learners is relatively high. Therefore, it is of significance to do some research on demotivation which can benefit both language learning and teaching.The purpose of the thesis is to investigate the general situation of demotivation among college students and explore the major factors accounting for their demotivation in English leaning. Meanwhile, it also attempts to examine if there are differences in demotivation attribution among learners with different genders and motivational intensities. Regarding to this, three questions have been designed in the research.1) Do college students suffer demotivation in English learning? If they do so, what is the current situation of demotivation for them?2) What are the factors contributing to the students’ demotivation of English learning?3) Is demotivation different in terms of gender and motivational levels? The subjects are131students, non-English major sophomores from a Comprehensive University. And the research instruments are questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. Also, the questionnaire responses are inputted into computer and analyzed by using software SPSS19.0. Results are obtained by applying the methods of descriptive statistic and independent sample t-test. In addition, nine students were interviewed before and after the study.The major findings of this research are presented as follows. The results conclusively demonstrated that demotivation is a common phenomenon among college students. Among the participants, almost63%of them admitted that they suffer from demotivation in the process of English learning. And6types of factors are accounted for their demotivation. Sequence from the strongest to the weakest are made according to the impact given by the factors on motivation:factors related to experience of failure, factors related to characteristics of classes, factors related to lack of interest, class materials, factors related to teachers, and class environment. Moreover, what deserves to be mentioned the most is that factors related to teachers exert less influence on students’demotivation which is different from other previous studies. And reduced self-confidence and the compulsory nature of English are the major reasons for students’decrease of motivation according to the interviews. What’s more, significant gender differences were found in demotivating factors. But, students with different levels in motivation (high level and low level) are different only in factors related to Lack of Interest; and there are no significant differences in other types of factors.