Demotivating Factors in Learning English as a Foreign Language among Students

The concept of demotivation and removing possible barriers of learning has not been well studied among Iranian EFL learners. This study aimed to address demotivational factors as an important learning barrier and assessed its relationship with gender, proficiency level, and educational level.Demotivational factors were categorized into seven types and their perceived importance among students was respectively as follows: ۱) reduced self-confidence due to negative experiences, ۲) inadequate facilities, ۳) teaching methods, ۴) lack of purpose to study English, ۵) teachers and teaching style, ۶) class characteristics, and ۷) negative attitudes toward English and culture of English-speaking countries. Findings of the study also revealed that the perception of the importance of demotivational factors differed among students from different educational levels, but did not differ with gender or proficiency level of the students.

Keywords:

Demotivation , motivation