A Comparative Study Of English Learning Demotivation Between Bouyei And Han Junior High School Students

There are various factors affecting second or foreign language teaching,of which learning motivation is one of the most decisive elements in language teaching.In the study of students' second or foreign language learning motivation,the positive aspects of motivation are being concerned by more and more researchers.While the negative aspects of motivation,also named demotivation,remains a topic that needs more attention.Actually,the phenomenon of demotivation is common in English classes.Therefore,it is necessary to carry out some research on English learning demotivation.The study takes 240 students of two junior high schools as the research participants in different areas of Guizhou Province.They are Han and Bouyei students.The study aims to find out if there are any differences between Han and Bouyei junior high school students on English learning demotivation and if there are any demotivation differences among Bouyei and Han students in Junior One,Junior Two and Junior Three.In this study,quantitative method and qualitative method were used.240 junior high school students' questionnaires were collected and all the quantitative data were processed in SPSS 18.0 for statistical analysis according to descriptive statistics and Independent Sample T-test.In order to provide an additional explanation of quantitative methods,several interviews were conducted as well.The study shows that it is a serious phenomenon of English learning demotivation in the two schools.In this study,a comparative analysis was made on Bouyei and Han junior high school students from the following four factors,namely,“the learning environment-related factor”,“the textbook and social environment-related factor”,“the teacher-related factor” and “the learner-related factor”.The results have been found in this study as follows: firstly,the differences between Han and Bouyei students on “the teacher-related factor” and “the textbook and social environment-related factor” are significant.Bouyei students are more likely to attribute their English learning demotivation to the two factors.Secondly,there exists no significant difference on the four factors between Junior One and Junior Two students.Thirdly,there exist significant differences between Junior One and Junior Three students on “the teacher-related factor” and “the learner-related factor”.Junior Three students are more likely to attribute their English learning demotivation to theirteachers and themselves.Lastly,the differences between Junior Two and Junior Three students on “the learning environment-related factor”,“the teacher-related factor” and“the learner-related factor” are significant.Junior Three students are more likely to attribute their English learning demotivation to the three factors.Four limitations has been presented in the study.The first limitation is that the number of the questionnaire issued is not large enough and less representative.The second is that the applicability of the questionnaire needs to be improved and some influential factors that are not covered.The third limitation of the study is that the number of interviewee is too small and no student is interviewed.The last limitation is that the deficiency in processing and analyzing the data because of the author's lack of experiences.