A Study of Demotivators in Chinese University’s English as a Foreign Language Teaching and Learning

Guimei Xie

doi:10.11648/j.her.20200504.15

Abstract

Demotivation and motivation study among foreign language learning has been salient and meaningful around the world since they influence the result of language performance. Different demotivators were drawn by different researchers coming from different perspectives. The objective of this paper is to investigate and develop demotivating factors in a Chinese foreign language learning context and explore the implications of these factors on future teaching. This study investigated 588 college students from a Beijing municipal university in a survey on demotivating items which influenced their foreign language learning considering their past personal language study experience. The methodology of the study is both qualitative and quantitative. The key findings of the study were that 7 Demotivators were distracted by using SPSS: teacher-related competence factor, learner-level factor, teaching content and material, inadequate school facilities and judgement, grammar-translation teaching method, confuse of purpose of language study, and testing and grading system. All the factors, especially the teacher-related demotivating factor, were identical with most research findings. While students-related factors were prominent factors in the study. This research is valuable for both secondary and high school teachers as it demonstrates students’ demotivating and negative factors in drawing students back in the process of language study and improves pedagogical means and methods by bridging the gap between researchers and educational practitioners. It can also inform educational bureau and families in the society about this current trend and how it could influence the students' foreign language learning process.

Highlights

Problems of demotivation in SLA have constantly and harassingly been one of the hot research topics among researchers around the world
In the United States, surveys were conducted in content courses like instructional communication and introductory communication course in college lecture classes with the focus of teacher misbehaviors as demotivators where causes of demotivation among college students were teacher-owned in qualitative investigations [16,17,18]
The second biggest barrier to study English was related with endless tests which was oriented for college entrance, this happened in Japan as middle school English was an exam hell [4]

Summary

Introduction

Problems of demotivation in SLA have constantly and harassingly been one of the hot research topics among researchers around the world. Demotivation is becoming a salient phenomenon and recurring topic in L2 studies and a few significant research studies were concerned about demotivation in the field of foreign language context or L2 context in the past few decades [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15]. The issue spread to the field of foreign language study and flourished qualitatively and quantitatively worldwide in places like Japan [3, 4, 9, 11, 19], Korea [10, 20], UK [21], Hungary [6], China [13]-15], and even Malaysian Arabic learners [22] in foreign language study and second language study from elementary school students [20], middle school students [4,5,6] to college and university students of English major and non-English major [3, 11]

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