A Study Of Remotivation And Its Influential Factors In Undergraduates' English Learning

Motivation has been widely accepted as one of the most primary factors in determining successful language learning for learners.There is no doubt that demotivation will have a negative influence on learners' English learning.Therefore,it is necessary to do research on learners' remotivation which can make motivation get online again and continue motivating learners to learn.Remotivation,as a new concept or research direction,has not been fully accepted by researchers home and abroad.In terms of the amount and the quality,research on remotivation cannot compare to that of motivation or demotivation.Although the amount is limited and the perspective is single,there are still great achievements in this field.Among these researches,researchers from South Korea and Japan are the mainstream,who have their own research perspectives respectively and do research based on their previous studies.However,studies on remotivation are relatively rare at home in the field of second language acquisition,among which few them study remotivating factors in English learning.According to the research gap,quantitative and qualitative research methods are adopted in the present study to explore undergraduates' motivation changes and remotivating factors in English learning.Participants in the present study are 102 undergraduates with 43 English majors and 59 non-English majors from Shandong Normal University.Two research questions are proposed in this study:(1)What is the motivation change in undergraduates' English learning? Are there any differences among the different antecedent conditions of the learner(ACL)groups,majors and genders? If so,what are they?(2)What are the remotivating factors in undergraduates' English learning? Are there any differences in remotivating factors among the different ACL groups,majors and genders? If so,what are they?The Chinese version of the remotivation questionnaire is used to identify the participants' ACL levels and access their potential remotivating factors.Then,the datacollected from the semi-structured interview works as a supplement for the remotivating factors.SPSS 21.0 is applied to analyze the data collected from the questionnaire.Based on the results and discussions,major findings are presented as follows:(1)The level of the undergraduates' motivation is above the average level in the period of age 12 to age 19 and there are obvious demotivation and remotivation fluctuations.And there are differences in motivation change among the different ACL groups,majors and genders.(2)Remotivating factors are divided into the internal factors and the external factors and there are differences in factors among the different ACL groups,majors and genders.Based on the findings above,some pedagogical implications are provided for remotivation in English teaching and learning.In the end,the limitations of the present study and suggestions for further research are proposed.