A Questionnaire-based Study on Chinese University Students’ Demotivation to Learn English

Abstract

This paper, adopting questionnaire survey method, investigated 367 non-key local university English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students' demotivation to learn English. The collected data revealed that there were two main categories of demotivators: internal factors (lack of intrinsic interest, experience of failure and lack of confidence, and unclear study goal) and external factors (teaching material, teaching process and teaching content, significant others, teachers' teaching competence and attitude of teachers, the relationship between teachers and students, teaching facilities and teaching environment). External factors are found to be more influential than internal ones in the participants' demotivation to learn English. The current study adds to the literature in that unclear study goal is an important demotivator in Chinese local non-key university EFL students' English study. The findings of this study will enrich the research of demotivation to learn English, and to provide an empirical basis for the needs analysis in English class and curriculum reform, as well as to provide reference for implementing central and local education policies.

Demotivating Factors of Indonesian College Students to Learn English as A Foreign Language

“…Nevertheless, the studies of Sakai and Kikuchi (2009) revealed 'lack of intrinsic motivation' to be one of the most salient demotivating factors. In addition, a study of Li and Ting (2017) confirmed 'lack of intrinsic motivation' as the most demotivating factor. The findings of Ghadirzadeh and Branch's (2012)…”

“…However, similar to the findings of present study, Ali and Pathan (2017) suggested a 'one man show' classroom in which students got less chance to speak as demotivating. The findings of Li and Ting's (2017) study also revealed the importance of teachers to pay attention to their teaching methods in order to motivate their students. In this regard, teachers seem to motivate students better when they use communicative teaching methods in the classroom.…”

“…Similar points were also made by Rajabi and Pozveh (2016) in their study. Furthermore, Li and Ting (2017) asserted that students' interests in English as well as its classes need to be maintained so that they will have clearer goal as language speakers and maintain their efforts to learn English. In this sense, motivating students to learn English can be done by making them interested to its culture and the benefits of studying English.…”

Data mining in foreign language learning

“…However, there are some papers in which DM is used for each isolated application, for instance learner motivation (13% of papers), learning styles (8%), provide feedback for instructors (9%), detecting language anxiety (6%), predicting performance (14%), L2 orientations (8%), language reading comprehension (5%), and detecting grammar issues and assessment (7%). In this analysis, the DM applications most frequently used in the context of FLL are: Predicting performance (Linck et al, 2013;Seker, 2016;Swanson et al, 2016;Wang & Cheng, 2016;Whitehill & Movellan, 2018), learner motivation (Apple, Falout, & Hill, 2013;Li & Zhou, 2017;Saeed et al, 2014;Tajeddin & Moghadam, 2012), provide feedback for instructors (Coskun & Mutlu, 2017;Jiang & Lee, 2017;Kaoropthai, Natakuatoong, & Cooharojananone, 2016;Kieffer & Lesaux, 2012;Rodriguez & Shepard, 2013;Zhao et al, 2015), learning styles (Aslan et al, 2014;Farrington et al, 2015;Hamedi, Pishghadam, & Ghazanfari, 2016;Hsiao, Lan, Kao, & Li, 2017), detecting language anxiety (Baghaei & Ravand, 2015;Cakir & Solak, 2014;Guntzviller et al, 2016;Martin & Valdivia, 2017), and L2 orientations (Allen et al, 2014;Lou & Noels, 2017;Maqsood et al, 2016;Winke, 2013). Figures 8 and 9 show the correlation between the educational level in where the articles mentioned to have developed their proposal and the EDM methods and applications that has been used, respectively.…”

Turkish High School Students’ English Demotivation and Their Seeking for Remotivation: A Mixed Method Research

“…Research on demotivation has been the foci in second language acquisition in recent decades (Li & Zhou, 2017). For about quarter century, researchers have been working on motivating factors in language learning process and how individuals are motivated as well as focusing on factors that decrease their motivation, or the demotivating factors.…”