An Empirical Study On Non-english Majors' Demotivation Of English Learning In Independent Colleges

In the process of English teaching and learning,we find that quite a lot of students' learning motivation has been decreased;some of them even have lost their learning motivation.As D?rnyei(2005)points out,learners will be affected not only by positive influencing factors but also negative factors in the process of language learning and those negative effects may cause learners' demotivation.For a long time,researchers mainly focus on the positive aspects of motivation,and their research objects are from students of key universities,while the knowledge on independent college students' demotivation situation remains a little.As a matter of fact,demotivation is a common phenomenon among independent college students and has been an important factor that affects learners learning achievements.This study aims at investigating the demotivating situation and its influencing factors of non-English majors from independent colleges.Therefore,this study has designed three research questions: 1)what is the overall situation of the non-English major students' demotivation in English learning as reflected in their motivation intensity? 2)what influential factors contribute to the non-English major students' demotivation in English learning and whether there exists significant difference in terms of gender? and 3)how do the non-English major students perceive their decreased motivation during their English learning and what strategies they have employed to regain their motivation?.In order to answer these questions,509 non-English majors were selected from Nanhang Jincheng College.A closed-ended questionnaire and a semi-structured interview were applied.At the same time,SPSS 22.0 was used to analyze the collected quantitative data,including descriptive statistics analysis,factor analysis and independent sample t-test analysis.Finally,25 volunteers were interviewed.Content analysis was used to analyze the data which were employed as a supplement for the study.The results showed that there existed demotivation phenomenon among non-English majors in independent college,and nearly 67% of the participants admitted that they had suffered demotivation in English learning process.Secondly,Seven demotivating factors have been extracted,and according to their degree of influence thes factors are: L2 learning failure,L2 learning material,L2 course design,lack of intrinsic motivation,L2 learning attitude,L2 learning environment and teacher-related factor respectively.It is worth noting that teacher-related factor has the least influence on the participants,which is different from previous research.Thirdly,female participants are more likely to be influenced by internal factors like past learning experiences,lack of intrinsic motivation and negative attitudes towards English-language learning whereas male participants are more possibly to be affected by external factors including learning materials used in L2 classrooms and the classroom atmosphere.Finally,participating students managed to use four strategies to regain their motivation,including reciting English words,reading English magazines,working on CET-4 past papers and watching English movies and TV series.