NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS ENGLISH x\NH TẾ QW Nee TRAN THI NGOC ANH DEMOTIVATING FACTORS OF BUSINESS ENGLISH STUDENTS IN ENGLISH LESSONS AT NEU AND STRATEGIES FOR REMEDYING DEMOTIVATION NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS ENGLISH ro Ve!) TRAN THI NGOC ANH DEMOTIVATING FACTORS OF BUSINESS ENGLISH STUDENTS IN ENGLISH LESSONS AT NEU AND STRATEGIES FOR REMEDYING DEMOTIVATION Hanoi, March 2023 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First and foremost, I would like to show my gratitude to my supervisor Ms Nguyen Thi Thien Huong for giving me support and guidance through the process of making this thesis. She always gives useful advice and a clear explanation whenever I ask. Also, my special thanks go to all of the BE students who participated in fulfilling my survey, and all staff of the Faculty of Foreign Languages, National Economics University for their dedicated and helpful suggestions for my future job and topic’s direction. My appreciation also extended to the reliable work of many researchers and investigators.
The finding of their studies is convincing evidence helping me complete my study. Last but not least, I would like to thank my friends in my team who are also supervised by Ms Thien Huong for their friendliness and kindness. They always give me excellent advice and remind me of important information. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This study combined cooperative tasks with qualitative and quantitative research approaches to examine the factors that students perceived as demotivating in their English learning and their recommendations for addressing them.
Eighty-one Business English freshmen and sophomores at National Economics University answered an online questionnaire with 10 questions. To fit with the educational setting at NEU, the original collection of items was modified from two studies by Sakai and Kikuchi (2009) and Hassakhah, Mahdavi Zafarghandi, and Fazeli (2015). Four main factors were identified from the analysis: learner-related factors, teacher-related factors, curriculum-related factors, and environment-related factors. Learner-related factors are the most frequent cause of low motivation for students.
Based on the findings, this report concluded by making some recommendations related to demotivating factors which are helpful for BE students. For internal factors, students can remotivate themselves by “understanding the purpose of learning English” and “setting a goal”. For external factors, teachers can remotivate students by “making a high- press response to a student’s idea, making fair reward, explaining answers in precise detail, providing interesting learning materials, altering assessment types”. LIST OF ABBREVIATION SLA: Second Language Acquisition EFL: English as a foreign language NEU: National Economics University BE: Business English LIST OF TABLES Table 3 Research instruments iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2 Proposal framework of demotivating factors in English lessons Figure 4.1 Participant intake Figure 4.2 The importance of knowing the demotivating factors in English lessons Figure 4.3 Learner-related demotivating factors Figure 4.4 Curriculum-related demotivating factors Figure 4.5 Environment-related demotivating factors Figure 4.6 Teacher-related demotivating factors Figure 4.7 Frequency of demotivating factors Figure 4.8 Potential solutions to learner-related demotivating factors Figure 4.9 Potential solutions to curriculum-related demotivating factors Figure 4.10 Potential solutions to environment-related demotivating factors Figure 4.11 Potential solutions to teacher-related demotivating factors Figure 5 SMART goals setting TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTT,.
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Limitations and suggestions for further Study .----«+++<<+++ss++ses+ 41 REFERENCES APPENDIX vii Tran Thị Ngọc Anh — 11190553 — Business English 61B - CHAPTER 1. Rationale Nowadays, English is considered the most widely used global language because of commercialization and globalization. Thanks to English, people from different geographic regions, cultures, identities, and religions can exchange information, knowledge, and technology. In addition, all the formal studies or research projects are forcibly written in English.
The current development of globalization requires students to be active and actively acquire knowledge. In learning, to achieve high results, students must focus and practice more than before. However, along with the development of high technology and the change in lifestyle after the covid 19 pandemic, many students have changed their views and attitudes toward learning. Specifically, after the pandemic, many universities have used two forms of learning in parallel (distance learning and face-to-face learning), including the National Economics University.
The combination of these two forms means that students have to change to accommodate a larger volume of assignments. This combination is flexible because students can stay at home while still absorbing knowledge. However, it causes more students to become unmotivated to go to school, leading to reduced teacher-student interaction and, as a result, lower achievement. In addition, the university level has much higher requirements in terms of learning methods as well as the amount of knowledge to memorize.
Pupils must actively acquire and absorb knowledge under the direction of teachers rather than waiting for teachers to give it to them as they did in high school. In addition to learning skills in class, students also have to practice many skills on their own outside of school. These burdens gradually make students become exhausted. Most students in this circumstance do not understand why, despite their best efforts, their academic performance is still decreasing and their interest in extracurricular activities has diminished.
Instead of seeking help, many students will silently blame themselves for being lazy', or 'low motivation’ and continue to fall into negative thinking, continue to lose motivation, and lose direction. The epidemic also makes changes in the student’s attitudes and behaviours toward learning. The youth now give more attention to taking care of their mental and physical health rather than in the past. For example, students spend more time concentrating on their nutrition, healthier relationship, or Tran Thị Ngọc Anh — 11190553 — Business English 61B - entertainment instead of learning.
As a result, the motivation to learn decreases while the motivation for other activities increases. There are thousands of studies established in Vietnam to find out the factors which demotivate Vietnamese pupils from English classes. For example, students at Tra Vinh University were the subjects of a study by Ngoc and Ngoc (2021) about demotivating factors in learning English. They discovered that these factors included unclear study goals, a lack of motivation in learning the language, poor English, and failing to score well on tests.
In addition, students were affected by untrained, unfriendly professors, crammed classrooms, and a lack of technological resources. Many of the students who take English classes at NEU do not really care about the subject and do not actively participate in class activities, which results in a monotonous environment and poor performance. To improve this situation, learners must find a way to regain their motivation. Teachers at NEU also incorporate a variety of teaching methods to help students regain motivation.
However, the result was not as expected. Therefore, it is urgent to find out the reasons why students are demotivated and find appropriate solutions to help students increase their motivation. However, there seems to be little data and official research relevant to demotivating factors of English major students at Vietnam's universities. Consequently, the topic “Demotivating factors of Business English students in English lessons at NEU and strategies for remedying demotivation” was chosen to help others have insight into this circumstance.
The aims of the study This study's major objective is to look into the demotivating elements in English classes of BE students at National Economics University. Based on the data collection, the study also proposes some solutions to enhance interest in English classes for these students. In order to achieve the aims, the following tasks need to be fulfilled: - What are the internal and external demotivating elements of BE students in English lessons at NEU? - What solution can be done to remotivate BE students in English lessons at NEU? Tran Thị Ngọc Anh — 11190553 — Business English 61B - 1. Research questions With the aims mentioned above, this study is to answer three following research questions: - What are the internal and external demotivating elements of BE students in English lessons at NEU? - What solution can be done to remotivate BE students in English lessons at NEU? 1.
Scope of the study Demotivation in learning is the factor preventing students from Better academic performance and higher academic grades. This study’s concentration is on demotivating elements which affect negatively the academic performance of BE students. Accordingly, to improve the quality of teaching and learning English, this study proposes some solutions. e Research content: This analytical research focuses mainly on the internal and external factors, as well as their ranking according to the frequency of impacts (by using an online questionnaire survey method).
e Research space: This study limits its coverage to 81 BE students (First and second year) at NEU. e Duration of the research: The research carries out from February to March in the second semester of the year 2023. The significance of this study The significance of this study is it proposes innovation in teaching approaches for BE students at NEU as well as pupils around Vietnam. The findings of this study are also expected to help teachers and administrators in the Faculty of Foreign languages determine the factor leading to demotivated students in classes.
Besides, this report also helps teachers to understand the motivating factors and the perspectives of students on their teaching methods. On top of that, the recommendation will support teachers to develop the designs and programs or enhance some activities to increase students’ interest in the subject. Finally, this report could be useful material for further study relevant to the topic. Structure of the report This report comprises six main parts: Tran Thị Ngọc Anh — 11190553 — Business English 61B - Chapter one — Introduction: The first part gives an introduction about the topic, including rationale, objectives, research questions, scope, significance, and the outline of the research.
Chapter two - Literature review aims to analyze and compare the results of several studies that were previously introduced to the research area. This part focuses on different definitions of motivation and demotivation and the internal and external factors of demotivation. Chapter three — Methodology gives information about participants, research method, research setting, data collection and data analysis. Chapter four — Major findings give us answers to the research questions which had been proposed in the introduction sector.
This chapter also makes a comparison between the research findings with previous outcomes of other scholars. Chapter five — Recommendation provides several useful methods and teaching approaches to increase attractiveness and motivation in BE classes.