Coping With Teacher Demotivation Toward Directed Motivational Currents

Abstract

 In the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA), motivation has played a crucial role for language learning and teaching. Just as motivation is important in SLA, demotivation constitutes an important factor for both students and teachers. In our previous study, investigating 97 teachers for demotivational factors, the teachers felt demotivated to see students' lack of interest and bad attitudes, as well as dissatisfaction with curriculum, teaching material and poor facilities. We concluded further investigation was necessary as to how teachers regain motivation and hopefully toward directed motivational current (DMC), which not only provides a direction for action, but it also energizes action (Dörnyei et al, 2016). In our present study, compared to our previous study which was analyzed quantitatively, we have collected qualitative data from some 34 college teachers investigating when they felt demotivated, what they did to cope with it, and how they regained their motivation. Data was collected, analyzed qualitatively, and factors which may lead to DMC was extracted. It is hoped that this study will be beneficial for facilitating better SLA learning and teaching, and also for teacher training.