A Cross-sectional study of contextual causes of demotivation among Algerian University students of english:The case of the department of letters and english at Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia University,Jijel

Abstract

The present study seeks to identify those factors causing demotivation among students of English so as to raise teachers and administrators’ awareness to those factors, and consequently, to render foreign language learning/teaching in the Algerian context more motivating to students. It is hypothesized that there are certain contextual factors that demotivate English learners, the identification of which is a first step towards rendering foreign language learning/teaching more motivating. In order to achieve the aim of this study, a questionnaire has been administered to sixty English students from the three license levels at Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia University, Jijel. The results obtained from the analysis of the students’ questionnaire revealed that some demotivating factors, particularly teachers’ personality type, students’ low self-confidence and administrative obstacles, are largely responsible for causing demotivation among students. Raising awareness to these factors will certainly contribute to rendering our context of the English language teaching at the university level more motivating to the students and hence more conducive to higher levels of proficiency in English among our students