VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
POST-GRADUATE DEPARTMENT NGUYỄN THỊ THU THỦY

A SURVEY OF FACTORS THAT DEMOTIVATE FIRST YEAR NON-
MAJOR STUDENTS IN LEARNING ENGLISH AT UNIVERSITY OF
LABOR AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS

(KHẢO SÁT CÁC YẾU TỐ GÂY GIẢM HỨNG THÚ HỌC TIẾNG ANH
CỦA SINH VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYÊN NĂM NHẤT TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC
LAO ĐỘNG – XÃ HỘI) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 6014.0111
Supervisor: Dr. Nguyễn Đức Hoạt

Hanoi, 2013
i DECLARATION
I, hereby, certify the thesis entitled “A Survey of Factors that Demotivate
First-Year Non-Major Students in Learning English at University of Labor and
Social Affairs” is the result of my own research for the Minor Degree of Master of
Arts at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National
University, Hanoi, and that this thesis has not, wholly or partially, been submitted
for any degree at any other universities or institutions.

Author’s signature
Nguyễn Thị Thu Thủy

knowledge and lack of confidence were the most demotivating then followed by the
class atmosphere, inadequate facilities, big size class and the teacher’s lack of
commitment. Based on the findings of the study, some discussion and implications
were made along with recommended suggestions for further research.At last, it is
hoped that the results of this study could be of much benefit for developing teaching
and learning English at University of Labor and Social Affairs.
iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii
ABSTRACT iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS iv
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vi
LIST OF TABLES vii
LIST OF FIGURES vii
PART A: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale 1
2. Aims of the study 2
3. Research Questions 2
4. Scope of the study 2
5. Methods 2
6. Organization of the study 3
PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4
1.1. Motivation 4
1.1.1. Definition of motivation 4
1.1.2. The importance of motivation in foreign or second language learning 5

REFERENCES 42
APPENDICES

vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ULSA: University of Labor and Social Affairs

vii

LIST OF TABLES

a better life. As a result, there has been a positive trend of teaching and learning
English across Vietnam. Both children and adults learn English with different
purposes. Children learn it as compulsory subject at schools and their parents want
that. Students learn English to pass the exams, to study aboard or to find a good job
in the future. Adults learn English in order to communicate with foreigner, do
business or just to relax with English music, films and newspapers and books. In
general, despite deriving from different purposes, everyone wants to turn English to
become their own instrument in their lives.
As an English teacher, students’ proficiency and interests in learning English
are things that get lots of the teacher’s care and time. Truly, we, teachers, really
want to have an effective and interesting lesson each day. And it is clear that
students also hope and like to learn in those lessons like that. However, teachers
often say that they can easily recognize students who do things not relevant to the
lesson or do not pay attention to the lessons, some even say that because they do not
like English. As an English teacher, I am always thinking about this and really want
to find the solutions for eliminating factors that demotivate students’ motivation in
learning English because the researchers on motivation and demotivation have
pointed out that “the strongest influence on motivation was not the presence of
motivators in the classroom, but the absence of demotivators” (Christophel
&Gorham, 1995). At the beginning of the semester, the absence of context
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demotivators and the absence of teacher behavior demotivators positively affect
motivation. This is true for both children and adults.
This is the reason why I choose studying on factors demotivating students in
learning English is the topic for my minor thesis. This study will examine main
types of demotivating factors that students meet. It also investigates the ways
students want their teachers do to help them overcome demotivation and it suggests
activities and techniques that help both teachers and students increase motivation in
learning English. The researcher hopes that this study will figure out a concrete

6. Organization of the study
This survey-designed study consists of three parts.
Part A deals with the introduction. This chapter provides the rationale, aims,
research questions, scope, methods, and design of the study.
Part B presents the development, which includes three chapters.
Chapter 1 deals with theoretical background and academic viewpoints on
definition of motivation, the role of motivation, definition of demotivation, and
factors that demotivate students in learning and demotivation in learning English,
some previous studies related and the case of ULSA.
Chapter 2 describes methodology. This chapter is composed of description
of methodology of the study, participants and setting of the study, data collection
instruments, data collection procedure, and data analysis procedure.
Chapter 3 presents data analysis and discussion. This chapter analyses,
discusses the results achieved from the study and offers some implications of the study.
Part C is the conclusion that presents the author’s reflection and the
outcomes of the study as well as indicates some limitations of the study and finally
gives some suggestions for further research.
4 PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
In this part, the author would like to give short review of motivation, the
importance of motivation in language learning, demotivation, demotivating factors,
previous studies and demotivation and ULSA.
1.1. Motivation
Among various factors that affect teaching and learning a foreign language
process of the learners, motivation plays an important role in learning process which
is thought to be a crucial reason for different achievement. As Scheidecker and
Freeman (1999:116, quoted in Dornyei (2001)) strongly stated that “Motivation is,

terminates, and evaluates the cognitive and motor processes whereby initial wishes
and desires are selected, prioritized, operationalised and (successfully or
unsuccessfully) acted out”. In their view, motivation is a complex phenomenon of
arousal which can change when a person works out and is an influential factor
throughout an action or a process.
In short, motivation seems to be considered a highly complex issue which is
easier to describe than to define. Different researchers have different ways of
defining motivation since they study motivation in different contexts: different
languages, with different subjects and different teaching -learning conditions. In this
study, the researcher understand motivation under three important factors of
motivation found by prior researchers: (1) the determination to the goal of learning
a language, (2) the effort to achieve that goal, (3) the maintenance of that goal or
effort and one thing should be remember about motivation is that it is not stable all
the time, motivation can change or be changed, increase or decrease over periods.
1.1.2. The importance of motivation in foreign or second language learning
Many researchers have shown that motivation plays an important role in
determining the result of foreign/ second language learning process. According to
Brown (2007), “motivation is one of the most important factors that will influence
students’ English achievement or performance. It has a close relationship with
students’ success or failure in English teaching in college. Therefore teacher must
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pay more attention to this aspect”. Motivated students are likely to learn more and
learn more quickly than students who are less motivated. They also participate
willingly, actively and pay more attention to a certain learning task or activity and
gain more success and high marks.
Gardner (1985) stated that positive attitude and motivation are related to
success in learning a second/ foreign language. A highly motivated individual will
want to learn the language, enjoy learning the language, and strive to learn the
language.

demotivators”. It has been regarded as “another side of motivation”(e.g. Dornyei &
Ushioda, 2011; Falout & Maruyama, 2004; Sakai & Kikuchi, 2009) or in other words,
the negative of motivation which “has a negative impact on students, preventing them
from gaining expected learning outcomes” (Trang & Baldauf, 2007).
According to Oxford Advance dictionary, “demotivate” means “to make
somebody feel that it is not worth making an effort”. Because there is something
that raises meaninglessness or worthlessness in their mind when doing anything,
they do not want to pursue the task as well as try to perform it without any effort.
According to Zhang (2007), demotivation can be defined as “the force that
decrease students’ energy to learn and/or the absence of the force that stimulates
students to learn”.
According to Dorneyi (2001), demotivation refers to “external forces that
reduce or diminish the motivational basis of a behavioral intention or an ongoing
action”. However, not all the researchers agreed with this definition. Sakai and
Kikuchi (2009) stated that “Dorneyi limited the original definition of demotivation
to only external factors” and they also pointed out that in fact, Dorneyi (2001)
himself considered self-confident reduction and negative attitude as demotivating
factors in learning process. Then they felt the need to expand Dorneyi’s definition
of demotivation, concluding both external and internal factors which reduce or
diminish motivation during the process of learning. The loss of interest can
originate from many sources of demotivation, such as a teacher who cannot control
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the class or a boring text book can be a demotive for learners or learners feel
demotivated because of experiences of failure.
Moreover, as mentioned above, motivation consists of 2 types: intrinsic and
extrinsic, for example, someone learns English intrinsically because he/she finds a
sense of pleasure when doing a task whereas extrinsically motivated learners learn
English due to the rewards, high marks or job promotion. These two types can be
independent or relevant to each other in contributing to learners’ motivation. For

According to Chambers (1993), the underlying causes of student
demotivation perceived were quite different by the teachers and the students. While
teachers perceived them to be related to psychological, attitudinal, social, historical
and geographical reasons. The students perceived the causes of demotivation were
various, i.e, teacher’ behaviours, class size, ect. However, Chambers did not try to
determine what demotivating factors were or to look at them critically, he just listed
the students’ points of view.
Oxford (1998) conducted a qualitative study on demotivation, which focused
on a teacher’s influence on both motivation and demotivation. The finding from her
study revealed four broads sources of demotivation:
1. The teacher’s personal relationship with students
2. The teacher’s attitude towards the course and materials
3. Style conflicts between teachers and students
4. The nature of classroom activities.
In his study, the prompts specifically referred to the teacher’s responsibility
as a source of demotivation, participants in the study might not provide other
potential sources.
According Dornyei’s study (originally in 1998 but based on 2001), there are
9 categories of factors that demotivate students in foreign language learning as
follows:
1. The teacher
2. Inadequate school facilities
3. Reduction of self-confidence due to the experience of failure or success
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4. Negative attitude toward the foreign language study
5. Compulsory nature of the foreign language study
6. Interference of another foreign language that pupils are studying
7. Negative attitude toward the community of the foreign language spoken
8. Attitude of group members

humorous in the classroom:
1. Smile/ Be lighthearted
2. Be spontaneous/ natural (Relax control a little/ break the routine
occasionally; Be willing to laugh at yourself/ don’t take yourself so seriously)
3. Foster an informal climate/ be conversational and loose
4. Begin class with a thought for the day, a poem, a short anecdote, or a
humorous example
5. Use stories and experiences that emerge from the subject matter. Use
personal experiences.
6. Relate things to the everyday life of students.
7. Plan lectures/ presentations in short segments with humor injected. Plan a
commercial break. Use a slide or overhead.
8. Encourage a give-and-take climate between yourself and students. Play off
their comments. Learn their names
9. Ask students to supply you with some of their jokes, stories, or anecdotes.
Share these.
10. Tell a joke or two. Do outrageous things. Admit you are no good at it.
Appear human.
• Teacher’s commitment to the students’ progress
Besides, teachers’ commitment strongly affects to students’ motivation as many
researchers have believed that the teacher’s commitment is the significant predictor of
student effectiveness. This is based on arguments claiming that student achievement is
intertwined with teacher’s commitment to their works, their school and their students
(Firestone and Rosenblum, 1988). According to Dorneyi (2001), teachers should show
commitment towards their students’ learning and progress, at the same time they
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should care for what their students have learnt and succeeded. For example, teachers
should offer concrete assistance; offer to meet students individually to explain things;
or allow students to call at home when they have a problem.

Background knowledge refers to the existing information on a specific topic in each
language lesson. Therefore, if students lack background knowledge, it is difficult for
them to get involved in learning activities. They will be unable to comprehend new
materials and more importantly, they will lose their interest in learning lessons.
Realizing the influence of this factor, the teacher needs to provide the amount of
background information available and to see that they are able to use them.
Besides, language items such as vocabulary and grammatical structures can
be considered to have an impact on the students’ feelings. This causes difficulties in
getting meaning as well as practicing language skills.
Learner’s prior knowledge is known to be an important prerequisite for
individual knowledge construction and learning outcome. Theoretical approaches
stress the importance of learner’s background knowledge when acquiring new
learning material (Weinert and Helmke, 1998). It can be implied that if the student
lacks of background knowledge, he can easily get demotivated because he must feel
more difficult in learning.
 Learner’s personality
Through the learner’s personality varies from person to person, it is a key
factor that can motivate or demotivate the learner in learning foreign or second
language learning. Many researchers on demotivation of learners’ personalities have
been investigated. In addition, there is a close connection between a person’s
personality type and their learning style. If they find their own style is not suitable
to the context of learning, they will be demotivated.
 Learner’s lack of confidence
Learner’s motivation can strongly decrease depending on how much
confidence learner’s lack. As a result, when a learner lacks confidence toward the
language they are learning and the environment they are in, they can easily get
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anxiety which not only demotivate them but also is related to proficiency as
suggested by Clemen, Dorneyi and Noel (1994)

atmosphere in the classroom as Lightbown and Spada (1999) claimed that
supportive and non-threatening atmosphere makes a contribution to learner’s
motivation. In other words, negative, stressed, unsafe and boring atmosphere
tremendously demotivate students in learning. For example, one student often felt
confused and unconfident because she felt that other groups laughed at her poor
English skills (Dorneyi’s study, 2001).
• The textbook
It is the fact that not every course book is interesting and attractive to
students. When students do not like the course book, they describe it “the worst
course book in the world” and “incredible bad” (Dorneyi, 2001). It is strange that
students feel motivated with the course book they hate.
1.3. Previous studies in the world and in Vietnam
 Dorneyi’s study
Dorneyi’s study (originally in 1998 but based on 2001) was qualitative. The
Subjects consist of 50 pupils in various secondary schools in Budapest, Hungary who
were studying either German or English as a foreign language and they had been
considered as being particularly demotivated by their teachers or peers. He collected
the data by using structured interviews from 10 to 30 minutes. The subjects were asked
to answer a list of questions but they were allowed to speak freely.
From the data, nine categories of demotivating factors were the teacher, self-
confident reduction, inadequate school facilities, negative attitude toward L2, the
compulsory nature of the L2 learning, interference of another foreign language,
negative attitude toward the L2 community, attitude of group member and course book.
The teacher-related factors accounted more than half of all demotivating
factors. Two factors with significant proportions (more than 10%) were inadequate
school facilities and negative attitude toward the L2. The strength of Dorneyi’s
study laid in his focused approach to study demotivation. In detail, he focused
students who were identified as demotivated one, which offered details and
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