Abstract

Since Gardner introduced the importance of motivation on Language 2 learning, the concept has been accompanied with three more relevant concepts; amotivation, demotivation and remotivation. This paper mainly focused on high school students’ de-motivation and remotivation in English. De-motivation is a set of factors which decreases the motivation level of the learners and re-motivation is an attempt to overcome those de-motivating factors. English learning-teaching process has been a problematic issue for a long time in Turkey. While there are researches focusing on the de-motivating factors in many countries, such a research for Turkish high school students has not been found. This research aimed to fill this research gap and to determine the English demotivation level of the students and the demotivating factors for them and to put forth suggestions to re-motivate the learners. An explanatory design was used as a mixed method research design. The sample was constituted of 579 students. Research results revealed that demotivation level of high school students in English is quite high, their motivation decreases most in high school period. Lack of interest in English, attitude of course teacher, classroom environment and course materials are among demotivating factors. In addition, the students request that, for remotivation, courses should be entertaining, technological tools should be utilized more and frequency of speaking activities should be increased.

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