A Study On The Demotivating Dynamics Among Chinese EFL Learners In The Long-distance Network Education

As one of the key research objects in the second language learning,the learner's motivational issue is deeply worried by the researchers in common.In addition,with the progress of the era of network information,and the alternations of the long-distance educational products,the study and the motivational variation issue of the Chinese online EFL(L2)learning have received extensive attention from various aspects of the society.However,it is difficult for people to apply the results of the motivational studies in the traditional L2 classroom to the network English classroom learning situation,and various processes of all dynamic variations such as demotivation and remotivation are also difficult to be explained and studied by the traditional static motivational theories.Thus,the demotivating problems of the online Chinese EFL learners in LDNE(longdistance network education)have gradually become a new topic in today's L2 research.However,in the past Chinese online L2 teaching and study,the factors influencing the EFL learners' motivational variations mainly focus on the demotivating process,but seldom involve the remotivating process.Among all those researches,the research on the key influencing factors in the demotivating process is not deep enough to interact and contrast with the studies on the influencing factors in the remotivating process.This paper starts with the study of the influencing factors of the online English learners' demotivation and focuses on the dynamic change and the remotivating process of the Chinese online English learners.This study focuses on the following three questions:(1)What are the factors influencing the demotivation of Chinese online English learners? What are the difference they have compared with the traditional classroom?(2)Are there correlations between the past demotivation of Chinese online English learners and their current performance?(3)What are the connections between the demotivating and the remotivating processes? As a whole,how do influencing factors of the demotivation ‘behave'?In this paper,72 students from the School for Distance Education of a university in Shanghai accepted the questionnaire survey and six of them accepted the interview survey,for the ‘value' factor and the ‘sense of achievement' factor are confirmed as the two major factors influencing the Chinese online EFL learners among all demotivating factors.The study also indicates that the Chinese online English learners' psychological experiences of demotivation in factors of network platform facilities,course levels,values,and senses of achievement will affect their present academic performance(performance for scores).What's more,in terms of variations among demotivating and remotivating processes,the usual pattern of demotivating and remotivating processes is predicted and interrelations are found among online EFL learners in the remotivating processes in LDNE.Conclusions are also drawn for the UGR online learners are less likely to ‘get remotivated' by internal motivations compared to AGR online learners.Specific factors are proved influential not only in demotivation but in remotivation.At the end of the paper,for the purpose of improving and maintaining the learning motivation of online Chinese English learners,students who participated in the survey provide some suggestions.Based on those suggestions,this paper puts forward some suggestions and coping strategies for the online English course learners,teachers and providers.