VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

HOÀNG NGỌC LINH

AN INVESTIGATION OF DEMOTIVATORS IN ENGLISH
LISTENING LESSONS OF THE 10TH FORM NON-
ENGLISH MAJORS AT CAO BANG UPPER SECONDARY
SCHOOL FOR THE GIFTED
(Nghiên cứu các yếu tố gây nên sự mất hứng thú trong các giờ học nghe
tiếng Anh của học sinh một số lớp 10 không chuyên Anh tại trường
THPT Chuyên Cao Bằng)
M.A. MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60 14 10
Hanoi – 2011
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

PAGES
Declaration
i
Acknowledgements
ii
Table of contents
iii
List of tables and charts
v
List of abbreviations
vi
Abstract
vii
PART A: INTRODUCTION.

1. Rationale
1
2. Aims of the study
2
3. Research questions
2
4. Significance of the study
2
5. Scope of the study
2
6. Method of the study
2
7. Design of the study
3
PART B: DEVELOPMENT

13
2.1.3. The English textbook 10
14
2.2 Subjects of the study
15
2.3 Data collection instruments
15
Summary

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS

3.1 Data analysis of students’ responses
17
3.2 Data analysis of teachers’ responses
25
3.3 Findings and discussion
28
3.4. Recommendations
30
Summary

PART C: CONCLUSION

1. Summary of the study
33
2. Limitations and suggestions for further study
33
REFERENCES

APPENDICE
vi
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
L2
Second language
CBUSSG
Cao Bang Upper Secondary School for the Gifted


English Section and 6 teachers of English at CBUSSG. The main instruments employed
for the data collection were survey questionnaires and structured interviews. Four factors
including teachers’ behaviors and teaching methods, students’ characteristics and learning
environment were extracted through the analysis of data collected. The research also
reveals that the teachers’ behaviors and teaching methods were the most dominant
demotivating factors for many students at CBUSSG. It is interesting to find that textbook
and curriculum were not a very strong source of demotivation. Based on the findings,
recommendations which are of significance to both teachers and students are provided to
solve the problems. At last, it is hoped that the results of this study could be of much
benefit for developing teaching and learning listening English at CBUSSG.

1
PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study

With Vietnam‟s entry into the WTO and opening its markets to the outside world,
the demand for English speaking proficiency among people especially students is on the
rise than ever before. In fact, large numbers of students are being required to learn it
through compulsory programs in schools and universities. Therefore, the teaching and
learning of English at all levels especially at high schools has been given a lot of special
attention in recent years. Since the introduction of the new English textbook 10 which
emphasizes the need for the development of students‟ communicative competence through
the four skills including speaking, listening, reading and writing, there has been shift from
the traditional teaching methods to communicative language teaching. However, most
English language classrooms continue to be places to memorize textbooks rather than
practise communication and English is still to be treated as a school subject that needs to
be mastered and tested rather than a tool for communication. The current teaching and

To achieve the aims mentioned above, the following research questions were
proposed:
(1) What are demotivators in listening lessons of the 10
th
non- English majors at
CBUSSG?
(2) What can teachers do to motivate students in their listening lessons?
4. Significance of the study
This study points out factors causing demotivations in listening lessons of the 10
th

form non- English majors at CBUSSG. More importantly, it can be used as additional
evidence for demotivation factors that Vietnamese Upper Secondary School students have
when listening in English. The findings and recommendations of this study will be of great
use to the improvement of the teaching and learning of listening of Upper Secondary
School students in general and of the 10
th
form non- English majors at CBUSSG in
particular. The study may guide teachers to help their students eliminate demotivators in
listening lessons and better their listening skills. The results of the study may also be
helpful for the students themselves and those who are interested in this field.
5. Scope of the study
This study mainly focuses on the demotivation factors that the 10
th
form non-
English majors at CBUSSG have in their listening lessons. The study of demotivators in
other skills would be beyond of the scope. It involves the participants of 6 teachers of
English and 102 students in the 10
th
form of non- English Section at CBUSSG. To go

Part C, CONCLUSION, summmarizes the major findings and points out the
limitations of the study. Furthermore, some suggestions for further studies are also given in
this part.

4
PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: REVIEW OF LITERATURE

This chapter presents theoretical background of demotivation, nature of listening
comprehension and discussion of issues and aspects concerning the topic of the study.
1.1 Theoretical background of demotivation
1.1.1 What is demotivation?
Motivation plays an important role in the process of English learning – teaching,
research shows that motivation is one of the main determining factors in an individual‟s
success in developing a L2, it is crucial for L2 learning (Dornyei,1994;
Oxford&Shearin,1996) because it directly influences how much effort students make, how
often students use L2 learning strategies, how much students interact with native speakers,
how much input they receive in the language being learned, how well they do on

general outcome expectations that are deemed to be unrealistic, whereas „demotivation‟ is
related to specific external causes. Dornyei also pointed out that some demotives can lead
to amotivation (e.g. a series of horrendous classroom experiences can put paid to the
learner‟s self-efficacy), but with some other demotives, as soon as the detrimental external
influence ceases to exist, other positive motives may again surface (e.g. if it turns out that
someone who dissuaded the individual from doing something was not telling the truth.
Researchers have taken an interest in demotivation, as it is considered to be a frequent
phenomenon related to the teacher‟s interaction with the students. In L2 studies, in
particular, the interest in demotivation has been aroused by a different reason. The L2
domain is most often characterised by learning failure, in the sense that merely everyone
has failed in the study of at least one foreign language. So, language learning failure is
directly related to demotivation.
1.1.2. Factors demotivating foreign language learning
Much research has been conducted on language learning motivation but less on
the demotivating factors in learning L2. The studies by such authors as Gorham and
Christophel (1992), Chambers (1993), Keblawi (2005), Rebecca Oxford (1998), Sakai and
Kikuchi (2007), Ushioda (1998), Tran and Baldauf (2007) discussed in the following
illustrate that demotivation in learning a L2 is a matter of concern worldwide.
Therefore, much more information is needed on the nature of the phenomenon.
Gorham and Christophel (1992) tried to determine what factors were perceived
as demotives by college students taking introductory communication classes. Demotivators
were collected from students‟ responses to the open-ended question: “ What things
decrease your motivation to try hard to do your best in that class?” the research findings
revealed three main categories of demotives, i.e., context demotives (factors likely to be
regarded as antecedent to the teacher‟s influence), structure/format demotives (factors over
6
which the teacher is likely to have some degree of influence, if not complete control), the

Interestingly, the study revealed that about half of the respondents referred to aspects of
7
English (grammar, vocabulary) as main demotivators. Furthermore, depending on the
results of a study conducted on secondary students in Budapest who were identified as
demotivated, Dornyei (2001) categorized nine demotivating factors including: the teacher -
personality, commitment, competence, teaching method; inadequate school facilities -
group is too big or not the right level; frequent change of teachers; reduced self-confidence
- experience of failure or lack of success; negative attitude towards the L2; compulsory
nature of L2 study; coursebook.
Rebecca Oxford (1998) carried out a content analysis of essays written by 250
American students (in high schools and universities) about their learning experiences over
a period of five years. In this analysis, four demotivating factors were extracted, they are:
The teacher’s personal relationship with the students, including hypercriticism,
belligerence, a lack of caring, and favouritism; the teacher’s attitude towards the course or
the material, including lack of enthusiasm, sloppy management and close-mindedness;
style conflicts between teachers and students, including multiple style conflicts, conflicts
about the amount of structure or detail, and conflicts about the degree of closure or
„seriousness‟ of the class; the nature of the classroom activities, including overload,
repetitiveness, and irrelevance.
Sakai and Kikuchi (2009) explored Japanese high school students‟ demotivation
by collecting data from 656 students through a 35-item questionnaire. The
questionnaire were designed to measure six constructs derived from previous studies:
teachers, characteristics of classes, experiences of failure, class environment, class
materials, and lack of interest. Five demotivational factors found were learning
contents and materials, teacher’s competence and teaching styles, inadequate school
facilities, lack of intrinsic motivation, and test scores. Contrary to most of the
previous studies presented so far, factors related to teacher were not found to have very

There are many different approaches to the definition of listening comprehension.
However, most researchers agree that all listening comprehension involves the use both
linguistics and non-linguistics knowledge. Linguistic knowledge includes phonology, lexis,
semantics and discourse structure as well as the ability to interact with the input in real
time (Buck, 2001:3). Meanwile non- linguistic is concerned with contextual knowledge
(Buck, 2001:2; Lynch, 1998: 3).
According to Buck, listening comprehension is a process whereby listeners extract
meaning based on their own knowledge and experience. He believes that since
comprehension takes place in the listener‟s mind, the setting or context for interpretation is
the cognitive environment of the listener.
Like Buck, Rost (2002:59) believes that listening comprehension is a process
whereby language is linked to previous stored notions and associations in real life. In other
9
words, it is the understanding of what the language is referring to, based on one‟s past
experience or knowledge.
From the viewpoint of Shohamy and Inbar (1991:26), listening comprehension
entails an ability to receive and interprete input simultaneously because a listener cannot
replay what he or she has heard. A competent listener is therefore dependent on instant
comprehension as well as an ability to remember information. Unlike written text,
utterances are dependent on the context and are usually unedited. In accordance with the
ideas of Buck and Rost, Shohamy and Inbar also believe that listening comprehension
necessitates an interaction between the listener‟s background knowledge and the spoken
text.
Listening is described by Bejar, Douglas, Jamieson, Nissan and Turner (2000:2) as
“the process of receiving an acoustic signal which is then structures”. According to them,
the reception of the signal occurs in real-time but the structuring is dependent on cognitive
processes which involve linguistic, situational and background knowledge which have to

in language learning and teaching, it is essential for language teachers to help students
become effective listeners. In the communicative approach to language teaching, this
means modeling listening strategies and providing listening practice in authentic situations:
precisely those that learners are likely to encounter when they use the language outside the
classroom.
1.2.3. The process of listening comprehension
Listening comprehension is a complex psychological process of listeners‟
understanding language by sense of hearing. It is an interactive process of language
knowledge and psychological activities. However, this process is not simply decoding
the message; it also involves the combining of the decoding of the message process with
its reconstruction as meaning (Ma Lihua, 2002).
According to Underwood, there are three distinctive stages in the listening process.
At the first stage, the sounds go into a sensory store called the “echoic memory”, and are
organized into meaningful units according to the knowledge of the language the listener
has. The second stage is the processing of the information by the short – term memory.
This is a brief stage at which words or groups of words are checked and compare with the
information already held in the long-term memory and the meaning is extracted from them.
When the meaning has been grasped, the actual words are generally forgotten. Once the
listener has constructed a meaning from the utterance, he or she might transfer the
information to the long-term memory for later use. It can be seen that here Underwood
relates the aural process in terms of time and memory. The background knowledge of
listeners is also mentioned in the listening process.
In addition, the conception of bottom- up and top- down processes in
comprehension are also mentioned by such authors as Lynch (1988), Rubin (1994) and
11
Rost (2002). According to them, listeners use top- down processes when they use context
and prior knowledge to build a conceptual framework for comprehension. Prior-knowledge

12
characteristics. Besides, he also identifies some problems which listeners often face
including the speed of the speaker and the language he uses; students‟ unfamiliarity with
the sounds, stress, intonation and rhythm of natural spoken English; different varieties or
accents; false starts, hesitation, repetitions and incomplete sentences. In addition, he also
points out that boredom, fatigue or distraction outside the classroom may affect the
concentration of the listeners.
cassette player.
2.1.2. The teachers and the students
As in every high school, English is taught here as a compulsory subject by 7
teachers aged from 26 to 48. Two of them graduated from the English Department of
College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi four others were
from Thai Nguyen University of Education and one is taking MA course. Most of them
are so young and have at least 5 years of teaching experiences, some of them have had
opportunities to attend the national or provincial textbook introduction workshops or
training programmes to get the ideas about the textbook and new teaching methodology.
However, they do not have chances to contact with native speakers or specialists who can
give them precious help and advice.
14
Concerning students, currently, there are approximately 618 students whose age
ranges from fifteen to eighteen. Most students in natural scientific classes are males.
Many of them come from districts of Cao Bang province and belong to different ethnic
minority groups of Tay, Nung, Dao. One advantage of students studying at this school is
that they are brought up by scholarships from national and provincial budgets. To be
eligible for the school, students have to take hard entrance exams and have at least 4 years
of experiencing in English at lower secondary schools. However, their English
competence is very low. It can be due to the lack of native learning environment. Students
rarely have chance to communicate with English speaking people in both classroom and
outside classroom. Consequently, their abilities to speak and listen in English cannot be
improved and motivated as much as they live in the target language learning environment.
Although they are aware of the importance and necessity of learning English, few
students have real interest in learning English. In other words, the majority of the students
do not pay much attention to English, they are reluctant to speak English at school or
even in real- life communication. Instead, they only give special attention to their

They have been learning English for at least 4 years, their English proficiency is rather
low. Most of them have poor knowledge of English pronunciation, vocabulary and
communicative skills like speaking and listening.
Another group includes 6 teachers ranging from the age of 26 to 48. They have at
least 5 years of teaching English. Two of them graduated from the English Department of
Vietnam National University, Hanoi College of Foreign Languages, the rest were from
Thai Nguyen University of Education.
2.3. Data collection instruments
Both quantitative and qualitative methods were employed to give qualified
background data for investigating non- English majors‟ demotivation to learn listening
English. In this study, the qualitative data (interviews) was conducted after the quantitative
data collection to deepen understanding and interpretation of the results.
In order to get detailed data, the study used a variety of research instruments,
namely questionaires and interviews.
The two survey questionnaires, one for non- English majors and the other for the
teachers, were adapted from Trang Tran., Balduf Jr. (2007), Demotivation: Understanding
Resistance to English Language Learning – The Case of Vietnamese Students. The first
questionnaire, consisting of 13 questions was delivered to 102 tenth form students from
classes of Chemistry, Physics, Biology at CBUSSG with an aim to elicit students‟ opinions
about factors demotivating them in their listening lessons, explore their attitudes towards
listening lessons as well as their interest and desire. All the questions were written in
Vietnamese to make sure that the students properly understood and express their ideas
fully. Whereas the second questionaire including 6 questions was conducted in English and
16
administered to teachers of English to identify their perspectives on demotivators in
listening English of the 10
th17
CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS
This chapter deals with the analysis of data collection. A careful analysis is clearly
presented in order to examine demotivators among the students.
3.1 Data analysis of students’ responses
(1) Students’ attitudes towards the learning of listening English Very important
Important
Quite important
Not important
Not important at
allChart 3.1: Students’ attitudes towards the learning of listening English
As can be seen from the chart, most of the students consider learning to listening
English important while only 0.98% students think that it is not important to learn listening
English. It is evident that the majority of them are aware of the importance of listening
skill, however, not many of them show their interest in learning. This can be illustrated in
the following table:
(2) Students’ motivation in learning listening English

Options
Questions
3.9
%
0.98%
31.4%
33.3%
32.4%
18 Question
3

How often do you listen to English at
home?
A. everyday C. never
B. sometimes D. once a week
E. usually 19.6
%

59.8%

2.94


9.8%

24.
5%

Question
5
What do you often do in listening
classes?
A. participate actively in all
activities
B. only pay attention to
activities you like
C. not participate in any
classroom activity
D. do other things instead
E. get too bored to concentrate 25.5