Demotivation in Learning Chinese as an Additional Language: Insights of Irish Chinese Learners

Abstract

The teaching and learning of Chinese as an Additional Language (CAL) faces many challenges in an Irish context. Among them, demotivation is a prevalent issue identified among learners in Irish higher education. An overwhelmingly popular perception of CAL educators and researchers has been that such demotivation was associated primarily with the inherent difficulty of learning the Chinese language. A large volume of research was conducted to discover how to reduce difficulty in teaching and learning Chinese, yet still, not many empirical investigations have been carried out to study the demotivation of CAL learners. This research aimed to make theoretical contributions to the field of demotivation studies and to offer insights for possible remotivation strategies in the Irish and a more general overseas context. It employed a two-phase mixed methods research design to investigate CAL learners' demotivation in the context of Irish higher education. The first phase is a nationwide survey to identify the main demotivating factors of CAL learning. The survey collected quantitative data from 210 CAL learners in Irish higher education and identified six main factors for CAL learning demotivation. Based on the findings of the survey, 13 qualitative interviews were followed to further investigate the key features of the identified factors from the perspectives of the learner, the language and the learning context. A model of CAL learning demotivation was presented along with a new definition of language learning demotivation to reflect the most recent development in demotivation studies and the findings of the present research. Discussions and suggestions were made in relation to the issues of demotivation for CAL learners, teachers, researchers and course management respectively at the end of the thesis.