A Study On The Investigation Of Chinese Non-English Majors’ English Learning Demotivation

In recent years English learning motivation has become a hot research subject in the field of Second Language Acquisition. However, most studies abroad and at home mainly concentrated on the positive aspect of English learning motivation and few studies focused on demotivation. This study, based on the literature review of demotivation studies abroad and at home, adopted both the quantitative and qualitative approach to conduct a questionnaire survey of English learning demotivation among 367 first grade non-English majors and second grade non-English majors in Northeast Forestry University and conduct an interview among 10 students. All the collected statistical data were analyzed by SPSS 20.0. Two questionnaires were used in this study, namely, the questionnaire of English learning motivation intensity which was made based on the questionnaire of Gao et al. (2003), and the questionnaire of English learning demotivation factors based on the questionnaire of Sakai and Kikuchi (2009) containing five factors and the questionnaire of Dornyei (1998) containing nine factors.The research results showed that:1) there commonly existed the lack of motivation, namely the demotivation, among Chinese non-English majors in their English learning process; 2) seven demotivation factors caused the occurrence of Chinese non-English majors’ English learning demotivation:attitude toward English learning, perception of English language cultures, attitude toward group cooperation, the factor of learners, the factor of the society, the factor of teachers, the factor of parents, the factor of other people’s influence; 3) the non-English majors’ English learning demotivation took on a dynamic nature, namely:after one year of English learning, the same research subjects’ major demotivation factors changed from the external factors to the internal factors; although the 2014 Grade freshmen’s major demotivation factors and the 2015 Grade freshmen’s major demotivation factors were both the external factors, the nature of the specific external factors were different.The research results of this study indicated that there existed severe learning demotivation phenomenon among Chinese non-English majors in their English learning process. Besides, the learning demotivation mainly derived form two aspects, namely, the internal factors and the external factors, and the two factors can be transferred under certain circumstance. This study offered corresponding suggestions to prevent or avoid the negative influence of learning demotivation on learners’ English learning from the perspective of the society, the teachers and the students. It is hoped that this study on the investigation of non-English majors’ learning demotivation can help students to improve their teaching and learning efficiency and avoid the negative influences.