Demotivating Factors among EFL Students of Economics

In an increasingly globalised world, English language learning is becoming a must, especially at university level. Learning a foreign language can be challenging, difficult, funny and interesting but learners need to be motivated. If motivated learners are every teacher‘s dream, are demotivated learners a nightmare? Not necessarily. Demotivation is an important issue which raises questions related to a wide range of factors affecting students’ learning and, in turn, teachers’ motivation as well. Motivation has been widely accepted by both teachers and researchers as one of the key factors that influence the rate and success of second/foreign language (L2) learning. In university contexts, foreign language learning can prove complex and demotivating, especially in those faculties where languages are not the main subjects. Most of the research on EFL has already focused on learners’ motivation. By contrast, less attention has been paid to the phenomenon of demotivation. Motivation stimulates learners to learn and work hard and encourages them to persist in their studies whereas demotivation tends to induce passivity, giving up and a lack of receptivity to new learning experiences