A Study of Demotivation Factors in College Students’ English Learning开题报告

1. 研究目的与意义

demotivationhas been a common phenomenon in college students’ english learning, whichhinders the smooth development of english teaching tasks and affects the realizationof college students’ ideal growth and talent. with the in-depth study ofdemotivation by experts and scholars and the continuous attention of teachersto the phenomenon of demotivation in practice, it is particularly important tostudy the demotivation factors and explore the countermeasures of remotivation.

fromthe perspective of college students, this study will analyze the demotivationfactors and the measures to reconstruct or restore their motivation. the mainpurpose of this study is to improve the current situation of demotivation incollege students’ english learning, stimulate and reshape students’ motivationfor english learning, build a harmonious teacher-student relationship, andimprove the efficiency of english classroom.

this project is of greattheoretical and practical significance for the study of demotivation in collegestudents’ english learning. theoretically, the research on demotivation in slaat home and abroad started late, especially in china, which started in the pastdecade. at the same time, the research on the demotivation factors is notcomprehensive and in-depth, and lack of in-depth analysis of their effects andinternal correlation. based on the research results of domestic and foreigndemotivation research, this project will further study the demotivationfactors, which can deepen the understanding of demotivation, and further enrichand develop the demotivation theory. practically, this study is of positivesignificance to both teachers and students. on the one hand, this study canpromote english teachers to improve their teaching methods and strategies inthe future, so as to help college students to rebuild their motivation. on theother hand, this study can also promote college students to regain theirconfidence in english learning, improve their sense of self-efficacy in englishlearning, increase input in english learning, so as to better realize theirideal goals.

2. 研究内容和预期目标

inthis study, literature research and empirical research will be conducted toanalyze the demotivation factors in college students’ english learning. moreover,countermeasures will be put forward to rebuild their motivation in english learning.

literatureresearch will first be conducted to review the existing domestic and foreignresearches on the demotivation factors and summarize the demotivation factorsfrom the perspective of internal and external. then, according to the resultsof the literature research, an empirical research will be carried out in theform of questionnaire survey on students of nanjing university of finance andeconomics, using the quantitative analysis method to analyze the data. thepurpose is to understand the influence degree and relationship of the factors.finally, based on the literature research and empirical research, the authorwill put forward some corresponding countermeasures from the external andinternal perspectives to remotivate students in english learning.

specificresearch questions are as follows:

3. 国内外研究现状

researchon demotivation began in the field of educational communication by gorham andchristophel (1992). chambers (1993) took the lead in introducing the study of demotivationinto the field of foreign language education. he conducted a questionnairesurvey on 191 ninth grade students and 7 teachers in leeds, uk, and found thatteachers and students had different opinions on the causes of demotivation.teachers believed that learners’ own factors, such as lack of interest, werethe main causes, while students attributed to external factors such asteachers. in budapest, hungary, douml;rnyei (2001) conducted a 10-30 minutestructured interview with 50 students whose motivation for english or germanlearning declined. he summed up 9 factors that caused the demotivation,including external factors (teachers, school facilities, coursebooks, nature of the foreign language study, attitudes of group members) andinternal factors (self-confidence, attitudes, influence of another foreignlanguage), among which, the teacher factor accounted for more than 40%. the 9factors douml;rnyei classified have become the cornerstone of demotivation researchin the field of foreign language education. based on douml;rnyei’s 9 factors, someresearchers such as arai (2004) and hasegawa (2004) concluded that the teacherfactor was the main demotivation factor.

subsequently,various kinds of empirical studies have been carried out to analyze thedemotivation factors. in recent years, japanese and iranian demotivationresearchers have made great progress both in high school and college secondlanguage learning. sakai and kikuchi (2008) conducted a questionnaire on 656japanese high school students and found that learning content, materials, andtest scores were the main demotivation factors affecting japanese high schoolstudents. in contrast to previous studies, compared with the former ones, teachers’ability and teaching style were not a strong cause of demotivation. joseph,james, and michael (2009) surveyed 900 japanese university efl learners and theresults suggested that learning environment, learner and reactive behaviors todemotivating experience were 3 main demotivation factors, in which the teacherfactor wasn’t mentioned either. in iran, sharififar and akbarzadeh (2011) conducteda questionnaire survey on 53 iranian college students’ english demotivation. theyfound out three factors: teacher factor, student factor and classroomenvironment factor, among which, classroom environment factor was the mostimportant one. in addition, in order to investigate iranian high schoolteachers’ and students’ ideas about demotivation factors, a questionnaire wasalso administered by tahereh, ali, and mehrdad (2014) to 80 language teachersand 300 third grade high school students. the results revealed 5 demotivation factorsincluding negative attitude towards second language learning, lack of teachers’ability and performance, lack of classroom technological facilities, lack ofteaching materials and adverse classroom environment. most recently, a researchcarried out in korea by song and kim (2017) found that most of participants’demotivation resulted from external factors, such as ineffective teachingmethods, learning difficulties and social pressures.

basedon the studies of demotivation factors by foreign scholars, it can be seen thatdemotivation is common in foreign countries, and the complex and diversedemotivation factors vary from region to region.

4. 计划与进度安排

1. introduction

2. literature review

2.1. researchon demotivation factors abroad

5. 参考文献

aria, k. (2004). what‘demotivates’ language learners?: qualitative study on demotivational factorsand learners’ reactions. bulletin of toyogakuen university, 12, 39–47.

chambers, g. (1993). taking the‘de’ out of demotivation. the languagelearning journal, 7(1), 13-16.

dornyei, z. (2001). teaching and researching motivation: appliedlinguistics in action. london:longman.