Why does the desire to learn Estonian sometimes disappear? Reasons of students' demotivation in the 9th grade lessons

Abstract

Motivation is considered the main factor of productivity in language study. The motivation of learning the second language is influenced on cultural context (the value of language learning, the faith in success etc) and on educational context (curriculum, teacher, learning activities, teaching materials, learning group). The both motivation factors affect the second language learner at the same time (these encourage the learners to study) but the demotivation factors (that push the learners away from learning) as well. The teachers who teach Estonian as the second language regard the low learning motivation the main problem connected with the language study. At the same time they cannot see their own role in rising learners motivation and prevent demotivation.The main aim of this research is to identify the main factors of demotivation in learning Estonian as the second language and study how the same factors have been perceived by the teachers of Estonian as the second language. To get answers to the questions of this research 20 semi-structured inter-views were held among the 9-class students learning Estonian as the second language and four teachers of Estonian as the second language. The results were encoded and classified by demotivation factors. Analysing the students’ answers there appeared 16 demotivation factors, that were grouped into three larger groups: the factors connected with learning activities, factors connected with a teacher, and factors connected with a learning group. The demotivation factors connected with teachers in the students’ opinion are: teachers’ unfriendliness, teachers’ unfair attitude, not understanding of teacher’s explanations, fear, forcing, lack of teacher’s attention and teachers’ unsuitable teaching style. Then follows the demotivation connected with learning activities, where five main factors appeared: uninteresting topics, dullness of learning activities, difficulty of the learning, unnecessity of the learning subject and too capacious learning materials. There appeared four main factors that were connected with the group of learners: bad relationship between students, learners’ inactivity, disturbance in classes and the uneven level of students. In this paper there appeared that the teachers are not used to analyse the factors that demotivates their students in classroom activities and learning topics. The results of the current paper can be used in completing training programmes for the teachers of Estonian as the second language and carrying out the train-ing. If teachers understand what demotivates their students, they have better chance to understand their own role in decreasing of demotivation factors.