Demotivation Factors in Foreign Language Learning
Abstract
Pınar
This study initially attempts to discuss motivation and demotivation in the
field of second language acquisition and additionally to explore the main factors
causing demotivation in learning English among university students of vocational
school. Demotivation, an understudied area in SLA is a relatively new issue for
researchers. In this respect, this study attempts to explore the main factors causing
demotivation in learning English among vocational school students. In the search of
the reasons of demotivation, a 35-item questionnaire, which was developed by Sakai
and Kikuchi (2009a), was filled by 60 university students. Descriptive statistics were
employed in order to identify the most and the least demotivating factors grouped
into 6 main categories such as (a) Class Characteristics (b) Class Environment (c)
Experiences of Failure (d) Lack of Intrinsic Motivation (e) Class Materials and (f)
Teacher. Findings from this study indicated that Teacher Competence was not a very
strong cause of demotivation compared to Class Characteristics and Class
Environment. This study also showed that learners did not perceive Inadequate
Class Materials as demotivating. Finally this paper discusses participants’ own
factors for demotivation with an open-ended question in the questionnaire provided
to the participants.
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