FACTORS CAUSING DEMOTIVATION IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING AMONG AGRICULTURE UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

Montha  Polrak; Napalai  Meela; Charinee Chansri

doi:10.55003/IJIET.8107

Authors

Montha Polrak Department of Languages, School of Liberal Arts, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Bangkok 10520 Thailand
Napalai Meela Department of Languages, School of Liberal Arts, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Bangkok 10520 Thailand
Charinee Chansri Department of Languages, School of Liberal Arts, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Bangkok 10520 Thailand

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.55003/IJIET.8107

Keywords:

Demotivation, Demotivation factors, Undergraduate students, English language learning, English language teaching

Abstract

In Thailand, agriculture undergraduate students have encountered difficulties in improving their English language, and demotivation has been explored as one of the reasons behind such difficulties. Hence, the study aimed to investigate factors that demotivated undergraduate students in the Thai context. The participants comprised 95 agriculture undergraduate students in a public university, and the stratified technique was used to obtain the participant sample. The research instrument was a demotivation questionnaire which included 35-item rating-scale questions exploring students’ perceptions on demotivation factors in five aspects: 1) Learning contents and materials, 2) Teachers’ competence and teaching styles, 3) Lack of intrinsic motivation, 4) Inadequate school facilities, and 5) Test scores. The findings show that the most demotivating factor in each of the five aspects were, namely, 1) expectation to use grammatically correct English, 2) inappropriate pace of lessons, 3) lack of use on language learning equipment and materials, 4) leaners’ attitudes on English as a compulsory course, and 5) learners’ low test scores. Among all of the 35 items from the five categories, the participants (54.73%) strongly agreed that Item 4 ‘I was expected to use (or speak and write) grammatically correct English.’ was a factor that demotivated them the most. The findings can help agricultural English language lectures and English language curriculum developers/policy makers create and revise their course, curriculum, or policy so that it enhances students’ motivation which is one of the keys to students’ success.

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