SURVEY OF FACTORS THAT DEMOTIVATE EFL TEACHERS AT VINH PHUC TECHNICAL - ECONOMIC COLLEGE Khảo sát các yếu tố gây mất hứng thú của giáo viên dạy tiếng Anh trường Cao đẳng Kinh tế - Kỹ thuật Vĩnh Phúc

The reality of English teaching and learning at VTEC prompts the researcher to conduct “A Survey of Factors that Demotivate EFL Teachers at Vinh Phuc Technical Economic College”.. Among

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

Khảo sát các yếu tố gây mất hứng thú của giáo viên dạy tiếng Anh

trường Cao đẳng Kinh tế - Kỹ thuật Vĩnh Phúc

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Hanoi – 2014

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

Khảo sát các yếu tố gây mất hứng thú của giáo viên dạy tiếng Anh trường

Cao đẳng Kinh tế - Kỹ thuật Vĩnh Phúc

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Dr Nguyễn Đức Hoạt

Hanoi – 2014

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CANDIDATE’S STATEMENT

I certify that the minor thesis entitled: “A Survey of Factors that Demotivate

EFL Teachers at Vinh Phuc Technical Economic College” is submitted in partial

fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts is the result of my own work, except where otherwise acknowledge and that this minor thesis or any part of the same had not been submitted for a higher degree to any other universities

or institutions

Hanoi, 2014

Tạ Thị Thương

be guided by my supervisor in this difficult but interesting topic He has spent lots

of time reading my work, and giving comments and advising on how to make my thesis much better than it would be

I would like to convey my thanks to all my teachers of the Post graduate course 21 whose fundamental knowledge about language teaching and learning is of great importance to the achievement of my academic study

Center of Language Education and Quality Assurance Research, ULIS - VUN for his great help and the favorable conditions he gave me during my time of using SPSS to analyze data

My sincere thanks go to my dear husband and my babies, for sharing my life and being a great source of support in my difficult time I am thankful to my parents for their continuous encouragement, and trust in my ability over the years since I started school I also want to thank all my sisters for their help, encouragement and care

I thank the English staff at Vinh Phuc Technical Economic College for completing the survey questionnaires, for their constructive suggestions to this research, and for their willingness to share their relevant problems with me during the interviews Without them, my research would never have become a reality

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ABSTRACT

Although demotivation constitutes an important factor, only a limited number of studies were conducted on teacher demotivation The purpose of this paper is to determine the sources of demotivation and the most salient demotivation factors among seven EFL teachers at Vinh Phuc Technical - Economic College (VTEC) In addition,

it attempts to explore the possible differences on demotivating factors in term of gender The study used a survey design involving a five - point Likert questionnaire and semi - structured interview techniques to obtain information The findings of the study revealed that, firstly, in term of three main themes, students were found the main source of demotivation in which "students forget doing homework" demotivated the respondents most However, when analyzing them in aspect of sub-categories, items related to professional life, administrative pressures and workload tend to demotivate the participants most Moreover, there were some differences in respondents' demotivating factors in relation to gender Some pedagogical recommendations for both teachers and administrators were also discussed based on the findings

Key words: EFL teachers, demotivation, demotivational factors, teacher demotivation

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1.3.1.2 Teacher‟s demotivation in EFL context 14

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3.2.2 The most significant demotivating factors among EFL teachers 36

Appendix 4: One - way ANOVA analysis of demotivating factors between

genders

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LIST OF ABREVIATIONS

EFL : English as a Foreign Language

ESL : English as a Second Language

OECD : Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development SPSS : Statistical Package for Social Sciences

VTEC : Vinh Phuc Technical - Economic College

VSO : Voluntary Service Overseas

Figure 3.1: Workload for teacher demotivation

Figure 3.2: Salary for teacher demotivation

Figure 3.3: Professional life factors for teacher demotivation

Figure 3.4 Means for demotivating factors in sub-categories

Tables:

Table 3.1: Student – related factors for teacher demotivation

Table 3.2: Facilities and material for teacher demotivation

Table 3.3: Colleague relationship for teacher demotivation

Table 3.4: Administrative pressure for teacher demotivation

Table 3.5: Family life factors for teacher demotivation

Table 3.6: Means for Demotivating factors in theme and subcategories

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PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale for the study

We are living in the global world in which English language has rapidly become an international language To meet this requirement, English has been taught almost everywhere in Vietnam, especially in schools, colleges, universities as a compulsory subject During language teaching and learning process, teachers are considered as one of the most influential factors affecting directly the students‟ personality, their major and their progress in studying and determining the quality of education system Besides professional knowledge and teaching experience, another key criteria which ensures teaching quality is motivation in working There appears, however, to be mounting concerns that high proportions of teachers working in many schools in general, and EFL teachers in Vinh Phuc Technical Economic College (VTEC), in particular, are poorly motivated Although there is no exact statistic number about this, from our observation and discussion on many forums or websites,

we can realize that there has been deterioration in morale, commitment, motivation and professionalism of teachers The fact that teachers were highly demotivated could have contributed to deterioration of commitment to work and student academic achievement Low motivation in both students and teachers is a pressing problem in education that is facing Viet Nam today

Demotivation is a relatively new issue in the field of Foreign Language teaching but is attracting a growing interest from many researchers and educators Demotivating factors negatively influence the teacher‟s attitudes and behavior and hence lead to undesired teaching outcomes According to Dörneyi (2001), demotivation refers to the specific external forces that reduce or diminish the motivational basis of a behavioral intention or ongoing action Undoubtedly, studying the concept of demotivation will be great importance for not only researchers but many teachers who becoming demotivated in their daily classrooms in different educational levels Despite the importance of demotivation in general, only a limited number of studies are available

on student demotivation, and even much less on teacher demotivation In Viet Nam, the researcher could only find some studies on student demotivation but could not find any relating to teacher demotivation

At VTEC teaching context, basing on class observation and examination result, English teaching and learning quality was considered to be not effective

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enough and the researcher has recognized the existence and effect of demotivation There is a big gap that need to fulfill - what are the factors leading to teachers‟ demotivation? How to sort out these problems?

The reality of English teaching and learning at VTEC prompts the researcher

to conduct “A Survey of Factors that Demotivate EFL Teachers at Vinh Phuc

Technical Economic College”

2 Aims of the study

The first aim of the study is to investigate demotivating factors among EFL teachers at VTEC The second aim is to find out the order of significance of these demotivating factors The third and final aim is to explore the possible differences

in demotivating factors among EFL teachers in terms of gender

3 Research questions

To achieve the above aims, the following questions are addressed:

1 What are demotivating factors among EFL teachers at VTEC?

2 What factors most significantly demotivate EFL teachers at VTEC?

3 What are differences of demotivating factors among EFL teachers in terms

of their gender?

4 Research method

This study is a survey research work in which both qualitative and quantitative methods are used in order to find out the factors that demotivate EFL teachers Quantitative research provides readers with “numbers, logic and the objective, focusing on logic, numbers, and unchanging static data” (Babbie & Earl, 2010) And the goal of qualitative study has historically been “to explore, explain,

or describe the phenomenon of interest” (Marshall & Rossman, 1999) To collect data, a questionnaire and semi- structured interviews are used to gain more in- dept

information concerning on the demotivating factors for EFL teachers

5 Scope and significance of the study

The study only focuses on finding out the factors that demotivate EFL teachers and examining differences in demotivating factors between male and female teachers at VTEC The results of the study cannot be generalized to all EFL teachers in Vietnam It is only useful for the colleges which have similar economic, social conditions and teacher staffs

This study is of great importance We know that student‟s learning depends upon effective teaching; hence we need to know factors that help in the

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enhancement of teacher‟s motivation This study may help the principals, teachers, parents and educators to plan and work towards improvement by enhancing the positive factors revealed in the study

6 Structure of the study

This minor thesis is divided into three main parts: Introduction, Development, and Conclusion

PART A: INTRODUCTION presents the rationale for study, aims of the study,

research questions, research methods as well as the scope and significance of the study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT, consists of three chapters:

Chapter I: Literature review provides an overview of the research issue

and then a summary of related studies in Viet Nam and around the world

Chapter II: Methodology presents participants, data collection instruments

and procedures of the study and how collected data is analyzed

Chapter III: Findings and discussion analyzes the collected data and then

gives some discussion basing on the results

PART C: CONCLUSION includes a conclusion and offers some measures

to help minimize teachers demotivation then some limitations and suggestions for further studies are provided

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PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

There are various factors affecting the language teaching and learning processes Among of these, motivation and demotivation have been widely acknowledged by both teachers and researchers as one of the key factors that influence the rate and success of the second/ foreign language learning These terms are, however, relatively complex issues that have produced a wide range of theories over the past decades In this chapter, motivation is firstly briefly defined and after that some of most influential motivation theories are introduced as a basis for demotivation The next part will deal with the definition and the impacts of demotivation in EFL/ ESL teaching and learning Finally, summary of the studies related to demotivation will be presented

1.1 Motivation

1.1.1 Definition of motivation

A number of definitions of motivation has been raised over the past decades

In everyday situations, this term is used to explain why people think and behave as they do In other words, it is a general way of referring to the causes and origins of

an action (Dörnyei: 2001) From the literature review, it appears that most researchers viewed motivation as “the drive behind human behavior” (Hollyforce & Whiddett, 2002: 3) Motivation concerns the direction and magnitude of human behavior (Dörnyei and Ushioda 2011:4) Therefore, motivation is thought to be responsible for “why people decide to do what they do, how long they are willing to sustain the activity and how hard they are going to pursue it” (Dörnyei: 2001)

1.1.2 Some motivation theories

Despite the seemingly simple definition, motivation is a relatively complex issue that has provoked a great deal of debate among second language researchers and as a result, a wide range of motivation theories has emerged over the past

decades In this sections, some of the most influential ones are briefly discussed

1.1.2.1 Gardner’s theory of second language motivation in language learning

Under the social psychological framework, Gardner and his colleagues have inspired and initiated much of the research of second language (L2) motivation According to them, students‟ attitudes toward a specific language group influence how successful they will be in learning that language (Gardner 1985:6) After

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introducing standardized assessment techniques and conducting several studies on L2 attitudes and motivation, he constructed his own theory of L2 motivation in

2001 which is illustrated in Figure 1

Figure 1.1.Basic model of the role of aptitude and motivation L2 learning

Gardener (1985) established a model of motivation in second language learning called the socio-educational model The model is concerned with the role

of various individual differences in the learning of an L2 In the model, two classes

of variables, integrativeness and attitudes toward the learning situation are said to contribute to the learner‟s level of motivation Thus, motivation in Gardner‟s theory

is seen to consist of the following elements: efforts to learn the language, desire to achieve the goal to learn the language and positive affect towards learning the language because it is enjoyable (Amemori, 2012)

1.1.2.2 Cognitive – situated approaches

In the beginning of 1990s, there was a growing need for alternative perspectives, major changes had taken place from cognitive revolution in psychological research This begins the so-called cognitive- situated period of L2 motivation research in which there was a desire to narrow down the macro perspectives of L2 motivation to a more situated approach characterized by micro perspective During this period, there appeared two most significant approaches: Self- determination theory and attribution theory

Self – determination, one of the most influential approaches in motivational

psychology (Dörnyei: 2005), was first introduced by Deci and Ryan (1985) In this

theory, motivation is divided into two main types: Intrinsic motivation refers to

Integrativeness

Attitudes toward the learning situation

Language aptitude

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behaviour that is performed for its own sake, because it is enjoyable and satisfying to

do Extrinsic motivation, in contrast, refers to behaviour performed in order to

achieve some instrumental ends, such as earning a reward or avoiding a punishment

Attribution theory is the one links individual‟s past experiences with their

future achievement efforts by introducing causal attributions as the mediating link (Dörnyei, 2005:79)

1.1.2.3 Process – oriented approach

Although cognitive - situated period filled the gap of temporal variation of motivation, an aspect that had been neglected in L2 motivation research (Dörnyei: 2005:83), there is still a need to adopt an approach that can explain the daily ups and downs of motivation to learn (Dörnyei, 2003:17) The process-oriented approach is an attempt to account for these ongoing changes of motivation which can take place within a single lesson or during a long period of time The most elaborated process – oriented construct, developed by Dörnyei and Ottó, consists of

three stages Firstly, preactional stage, in other words, choice motivation which is

responsible for selecting the goal or task that each individual wants to pursue

Secondly, actional stage whose responsibility is maintaining and protecting the choice motivation Lastly, post-actional stage is the last stage where the action is

completed During three stages, learners are influenced by different motives Therefore, different motivational theories do not necessarily exclude each other and they can be valid simultaneously if they influence different stages of the motivational stage

1.1.2.4 Current L2 motivation perspectives

L2 motivation is currently in the process of being radically reconceptualized and retheorized in order to take into account the contemporary notion of self and identity Therefore, nowadays, researcher added the idea of self into L2 motivation

research and the most relevant concept for this term is possible selves (Dörnyei,

2005, 2009, 2011) The possible selves are self - images of what they might become, what they would like to become and what they are afraid of becoming

L2 motivation self - system, one of the most influential nowadays, consists

of three main sources of motivation to learn a second language: the learner‟s image

of oneself as a successful L2 user; the social pressure that comes from the learner‟s environment - the attributes that one should possess in order to meet expectations and avoid negative outcomes; and the positive learning experiences concerning to

1.2 Demotivation in L2 learning and teaching

1.2.1 Definition of demotivation

In sharp contrast to motivation and motivating factors is demotivating factor which has been completely or, at least, partly neglected in teaching and learning studies especially in EFL context Therefore, not much literature can be found on it Demotivation can be interpreted simply as the lack of adequate motivation to do a specific goal and it was called differently: “another side of motivation” (Sakai and Kikachi, 2009) or “the dark – side of motivation” (Jenni, 2004) that makes both learners and teachers lose their interest in learning and teaching a second language

In other words, a demotivated person is one who lacks deliberate effort, willingness and investment for achieving a specific purpose (Kamal and Parisa, 2012) In the common-sense use or understanding of demotivation, it concerns negative influences that reduce or cancel out motivation (Dörnyei 2001:142) In 2005, once again, he defined de-motivation as “specific external forces that reduce or diminish the motivational basis of a behavioral intention or an ongoing action” However, he also emphasized that demotivation does not mean all the positive influences that originally made up the motivational basis of a behavior have been annulled; rather,

it is only the resultant force that has been dampened by a strong negative component However, the definition given by Dörnyei is not approved by some other researchers Sakai and Kikuchi (2009) believed that Dörnyei limited the original definition of demotivation to only external factors and that his definition may need to be expanded to cover both external and internal factors which reduce

or diminish the motivation to study English

Moreover, it is important to make a distinction between the states of

“diminished motivation” and “total loss of motivation” that is to say demotivation and amotivation, respectively In other words, demotivation is related to specific

1.2.2 The impact of demotivation

There are various factors affecting language teaching and learning process of language learners and teachers Among them, motivation and demotivation – negative counterpart of motivation, play crucial roles Moreover, motivation has been widely acknowledged by both teachers and researchers as key factors that influence the rate and success of the second/foreign language learning and teaching Motivation

is a factor of high or low of the goal (Brown, 2001:75) Motivation is one of the most important factors in language learning, which explains why teachers of English as a Foreign Language have always tried to find new approaches or strategies that introduce practical use of EFL in the classroom

It is widely asserted that low teacher motivation impacts negatively on teacher behavior and performance in a variety of ways including deteriorating standards of professional conduct, poor professional performance, and serious distortions in spatial development of teacher (Mwanza, 2010) Some other consequences also listed by Bennell (2004) such as: teacher absenteeism is unacceptably high and rising, time on task is low and falling, teaching practices are characterized by limited effort with heavy reliance on traditional teacher-center practices Moreover, teachers are devoting less and less time to extra - curricular activities, teaching preparation, and marking In addition, the 2004, World Development Report notes "cases malfeasance among teachers are distressingly present in many settings: teachers are shown drunk, are physically abusive, or simply

do nothing This is low-quality teaching - this is not teaching at all." (World Bank, 2004) Finally, Bennell (2004) and VSO (2005) added two other negative impacts of poor job satisfaction were high teacher attrition rates and brain drain It is widely reported that there has been a large scale migration of teachers from developing countries to the United Kingdom and other OECD countries In short, low teacher motivation can result in a number of negative impacts on teaching process

1.2.3 Factors that demotivate teachers in teaching

Based on the theoretical basis and the findings from previous studies which

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will be discussed more detailed in the next part of this chapter, factors demotivating students in foreign language teaching can be classified into three large groups: student – related factors, working environment and personal aspects

1.2.3.1 Student - related factors

According to Sugino (2010), demotivating factors related to student sources consist of (a) students‟ attitudes toward English such as: forgetting to do homework and sleeping in class, (b) their English competence such as: low basic English knowledge and low achievement, (c) culturally specific factors such as: lack of student participation and students‟ speaking to one another in mother tongue language

Similarly, Siti Sari (2013) summarized the findings of studies conducted by Doyle and Kim (1999), Tiziava (2003), Hettiarachchi (2010) and Aydin (2012) by classifying this theme into some subcategories such as: low basic of English, lack of motivation, students' achievement is low, negative attitudes and lack of vocabularies

Among these factors, the first and most important factor is their basic English knowledge Background knowledge refers to the existing information on a specific topic in each language lesson Many research proved that learner's prior knowledge is known to be an important perquisite for individual knowledge construction and learning outcome because it affects how the learner perceives new information, how a student organizes new information and makes connections for new information Therefore, if students lack background knowledge, it is difficult for them to keep up with the others This is also a barrier for teacher to get them involved in the activities, to make them understand or even to improve their achievement or performance at class because it takes longer time and much more effort of teachers to help such kind of students

Student's lack of motivation and negative attitudes toward English can strongly decrease teachers' enthusiasm in teaching because if students do not show a positive attitude towards the subject that they learn or are not motivated enough, they are likely

to learn less and learn more slowly than those who are more motivated, they also don't participate willingly, actively and as a result, gain less success and low marks

1.2.3.2 Working environment

Many researches have shown that working environment involving: facilities and materials, workload, salary, colleague relationship and administration

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* Facilities and materials

Lack of facilities such as staffrooms, classrooms, teaching and learning materials is clearly demotivating The working environment in the majority of schools is deplorable with dilapidated school structures, insufficient teaching and learning materials Poor housing conditions, lack of housing, large classes, undisciplined and unruly students have all added their toll on teachers‟ motivation (Kadzamira, 2006) The findings from many previous studies have revealed that the most significant demotivators related to working environment include limited facilities for teaching and learning in school, overcrowded classes, textbooks that do not match students proficiency and issues in teaching methodology In the process of teaching and acquiring a new language, adequate materials and classroom facilities play a crucial role because it can reduce time of preparing or designing the activities for students, students also may have more chance to enjoy authentic materials

* Workload

Increasing hours of work, more subjects, and constantly changing curricula are cited as major demotivators in some countries (Garrett, 1999) Many teachers express their dissatisfaction with the amount of work that they have to be responsible for With long working hours and big amount of extra- work would limit them from:

+ Spending more time at home or on their hobbies;

+ Being able to work elsewhere - such as giving private lessons, where there

is not a fixed payment scale;

+ Having more time to prepare carefully for their lessons;

+ Making time to check their students‟ homework

* Salary

This section analyses trends in teacher pay and the extent to which it constitutes a living wage There is a broad consensus among all stakeholder respondents that teachers are underpaid and this is the main factor affecting their motivation and morale (Kadzamira, 2006) Yet – although in low-income countries, their salaries can represent the largest expenditure in an education budget – teachers often have the lowest status and are the lowest paid of government employees (Brannelly and Ndaruhutse, 2008) Total pay does not cover basic household survival needs obviously leads to teacher demotivation

* Colleague relationship

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Another factor that is pertinent to job satisfaction is the aspect of working relationships among teachers in the educational institution The nature if relationship among the adults within a school has a greater influence on the character and quality of that school and on student and teachers accomplishment, than anything else (Barth, 2006) Positive relationships among colleague can be highly motivating and creating a wonderful sense of job satisfaction, it also helps teachers provide and receive both personal and professional support from their peers, including goal setting, sharing of materials, and designing curriculum Therefore, it can be implied that promoting positive relationships with colleagues

"may ultimately improve job performance as well as enhance job satisfaction" (Praver & Oga - Baldwin, 2008) Ducharne (2000) agreed and stated that:

"workgroup interactions, especially social supports receive from coworkers, may significantly contribute to job satisfaction and motivation among teachers"

* Administrator

Administrator support includes giving teachers classes where they have requisite ability for and expectation of success, proper materials for teaching, and proper assistance and training for new teachers (Praver & Oga - Baldwin, 2008), therefore, it can strongly affect teachers' motivation Teachers should be given chance for further training, consulted, rewarded and involved in decision making Administrators should also use different methods to motivate teachers, which include certification, recommendation, promotions, tokens, luncheons or holidays outside or within the country and provision of conducive environment to work

1.2.3.3 Personal aspects

Not many studies included this theme as a demotivating factor except for Tiziava (2003) Personal aspects can be divided into two sub-themes: (1) professional life consisting of teaching qualification, teaching experience and their passion for teaching career; (2) family life may relate to their partner's sympathy, their life outside classroom If teachers don‟t have good English competence and teaching experience enough, they may deal with a lot of pressure in their work In other words, they are too often not to be adequately prepared for the special demands of teaching career Also, their passion or love for teaching career tends to increase their motivation to work In short, all of these factors, depending on the situation, can be a factor increasing or decreasing the teachers' motivation

or L2 research” (Dörnyei, 2005) Despite its salient phenomenon in mainstream education, teacher motivation and demotivation still remains a highly overlooked area

of research in SLA and TESOL (Dörnyei, 2001) Many studies mainly focused on three issues: Teacher motivation, strategies to motivate teacher and teacher – student motivation relationship (Addison & Brundrett, 2008; Roth, Assor, Maymon & Kaplan, 2007) rather than on the factors that demotivate EFL teachers

1.3.1.1 Teacher’s demotivation in ESL context

Even though a great deal of research suggests that teachers in many contexts derive motivation from intrinsic rewards of teaching Pennington (1995) listed some

external factors that demotivated teachers including: lack of job security, stress

levels, heavy workloads, and disagreement with teaching methods And then in

2000, Dörnyei stated that there are a large “number of detrimental factors that systematically undermine and erode the intrinsic character of teacher motivation” (p.15) According to him, teacher demotivation is often associated with five main

factors: stressful nature of work, inhibition of teacher autonomy, insufficient self-

efficacy, content repetitiveness, and inadequate career structures Resulting from

many research (Kyriacou, 2001, Chien‟s, 2004), “teaching is considered to be one

of the highest stress profession” in many countries Teaching stress is often caused

by bureaucratic pressure, lack of adequate facilities, low salaries and constant

alertness needed in working with children or young adults who lack motivation

(Dörnyei, 2001; Kyriacou, 2001)

Dinham and Scott (2000), in a survey study involving 2000 teachers in Australia, New Zealand, and England reported that “teacher demotivation is mainly caused by intrinsic matters to the task of teaching” They also found that major

demotivators include the nature and the pace of educational change, teacher

workload, the community’s poor opinion of teachers, the negative imagine of the teachers portrayed in the media, and lack of support services for teachers In

agreement with the above ideas, after conducting a research in England and Wale,

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Spear et al (2000) identified some most common demotivators: poor pay, workload

and perceptions of how teachers are viewed in society

In a study conducted in 2009, Hui Yan provided readers an overview of

“student and teacher de-motivation in SLA”, he stated that there were two levels of contextual influences on teacher motivation: macro-contexts and micro-contexts Macro contextual influences refer to “the general work echoes prevalent at the social level” In other words, they relate to intrinsic rewards such as: to educate people, to impart knowledge and values, and to advance a community or a whole nation” and extrinsic rewards such as: high salaries and social recognition” Micro – contextual influences are more closely to “the organizational climate of the particular institution in which the teachers work and the characteristics of the immediate teaching environment, that is, the classroom and the learner group”

After that he drew out five general factors leading to de-motivation: stress,

restricted autonomy, insufficient self – efficacy, lack of intellectual challenge and inadequate career structure This conclusion is almost similar to Dörnyei (2000)

Similarly, Muhammad Tayyab Alam & Farid (2011) delivered 58-item questionnaire to 80 participants selected from random sample of 10 schools in Rawalpindi city He discovered some factors affecting the motivational level of

teachers at secondary school including: income status, importance in the society,

self – confidence, and incentives and rewards on showing good results

Additionally, drawing on in-depth qualitative data from fifty-four surveys and five interviews using a convenient sample of five ESL English teachers in public schools in Sri Lanka, age ranged from 36 to 43 years Hettiarachchi (2013) investigated the elements of motivation and demotivation reflected in Sri Lankan ESL teachers Out of 78 demotivators reported by the teachers in the survey, 40 (51%) of them were related to practical issues in teaching The most frequent

demotivators related to teaching included limited facilities for teaching and learning

in school, overcrowded class, writing school – based assessment, textbooks that do not match student proficiency and issues in teaching methodology

To sum up, most of the studies above have some common findings in term of teacher demotivational factors in ESL teaching process These factors include stress level, heavy workload, restricted teacher autonomy, community‟s poor opinion of teacher and low salaries

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1.3.1.2 Teacher's demotivation in EFL context

Above are some significant factors that demotivate teachers in ESL context, teachers in non-native English contexts faced additional challenges when they teach English to students who have limited knowledge to the target language in the classroom

Among limited studies available on teacher demotivation, Doyle and Kim (1999) conducted a study about this issue and discovered that salary, teacher – administrator relationships, problems related to advancement, curriculum, course books, heavy workload, lack of teaching autonomy and job security were the factors leading to demotivation

As for the Greek teaching context, Konstadina Tziava (2003) who surveyed

52 non – native EFL, in-service teachers, working for private language centers in Athens, Greece, found out some factors that motivate teachers such as: working environment, their relationship with their boss, colleagues and students, their teaching experience, the training they had …, he also explored four main factors that demotivate the Greek EFL teachers: (a) present payment scale, (b) the way that course materials are selected, (c) level of support from the Ministry of Education, British Council and the University of Michigan international exam boards, (d) lack

of autonomy to perform their job

Collecting anonymous responses of 300 teachers aged between 33 and 65, Kiziltepe (2008) categorized demotivating factors into five headings: students, economics, structural and physical characteristics, research and working conditions Overall, the results showed that students are the main source of motivation and demotivation for university teachers in Turkey

In a pilot study, Sugino (2010) investigated 16 language teachers, nine of whom are native speakers of English, the rest are Japanese teachers of foreign languages (five English, two non-English) This open – ended survey identified five factors that may demotivate teachers: students‟ attitudes, teaching material, teaching method, working conditions including facilities, and human relationships It was stated from the result that items related to students such as sleeping in school, and forgetting homework were the most crucial factors for demotivating teachers Basing on the result from her pilot study, Sugino continued conducting another survey on 97 participants, 52 of whom teach at the Defense Academy of Japan and the others teach at private and national universities in Japan Among five

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demotivators listed above, it was stated that students‟ attitudes, teaching material and lack of consistency in curriculum with clear goals were some salient factors leading to teacher demotivation

Additionally, by using semi-structured interviews and semi-closed questionnaires, Teddy Banda Mwanza (2010) collected the data from all basic school teachers, all basic school head teachers, former teachers, Education Standards officers in Mufulira district It was stated that: lack of job stability and security, poor salaries and conditions of service, delays in putting teachers on the pay role, rarity of promotion prospects, low prestige of basic school teaching and poor relations with supervisors were the causes of teacher demotivation

Similarly, Aydin (2012) from Turkey obtained the main result from a study that there are six main factors that cause demotivation during EFL teaching process They included problems relating to (a) teaching profession, (b) curriculum, (c) working conditions, (d) students and their parents, (e) colleagues and school administrators, and (f) physical conditions

Finally, by inheriting the results from previous studies, in 2013, Siti Rahma Sari conducted a qualitative study using demographic questionnaire and face - to -face interviews, the findings from this study are consistent with results of previous teacher demotivation research conducted both in developed and developing countries Some main demotivators for the teachers are students (their performance and success, their motivation and their negative attitudes toward English), school environment, physical condition, inadequate facilities in teaching and learning, duties besides teaching, poor salary, and inadequate parental involvement in their children‟s education

In conclusion, basing on the findings of the previous studies on

demotivation, six main factors can be drawn out in EFL teaching context: teaching

profession, curriculum, working environment, students and their parents, colleagues and school administrators, and duties besides teaching

1.3.2 In Viet Nam

Although demotivation is a salient phenomenon in general, and in L2 and EFL in particular, as we can see above, only a few studies have been conducted in order to gather information of its role in the L2 learning and teaching process, and majority of published studies are virtually, conducted in developed countries

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In EFL teaching context in Vietnam, only a limited number of studies conducted related to students demotivation are available but no research has been carried on teacher demotivation in Viet Nam

In terms of motivation, there has been little empirical research into Vietnamese English learners‟ motivation (Dang, 2006; L T Tran, 2007; Phan & Phan, 2010) L.T Tran‟s (2007) conducted a study with English majors found that even in a traditionally-considered boring writing class, Vietnamese English majors were intrinsically motivated by those activities that were relevant to their needs, interests and background knowledge Phan and Phan (2010) found that information technology (IT) majors who studied English were not only intrinsically motivated to learn English because it was interesting to them but also because of their needs to know about English-speaking culture

Despite the probable importance of demotivation, to date few studies have focused on student demotivation Even studies which mention it (e.g., Ho, 1998) have tended to equate demotivation with low motivation, rather than examining it as

a phenomenon in its own right

Trang & Baldauf (2007) asked 100 second - year EFL students from a University of Economics in central Vietnam to write stimulated essays about their foreign language learning experiences The result pointed out 48 demotivating factors, which were grouped into 114 categories and classified into two groups: (1) internal attribution including students‟ attitudes toward English, their experience of failure and the incidents related to their self-esteem, (2) external attribution includes teacher - related factors, the learning environment and others

Most noticeably, in 2011, Nguyen Thanh Ha conducted a research to investigate job satisfaction level among 43 young lecturers who have been teaching English in ULIS, VNU for less than 3 years The findings revealed that most young lecturers were satisfied with teaching profession, their working abilities, community‟s good opinion of teacher, and promotion prospects Some factors that displeased young lecturers including: poor salaries and economics, and facilities in teaching and learning

However, to the best knowledge of the researcher, no study regarding teacher demotivation in EFL teaching context has been done, therefore, this prompts the author to carry out a study on teacher demotivation to fill this research gap

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1.4 Need of the study

From the brief literature review above, it can be easily realized that there is a

serious lack of data on teacher demotivation in developing countries in general, and

in Viet Nam, in particular Unfortunately, there is no published research on this topic that has been conducted earlier in Viet Nam available In other words, this subject has been under researched in most developing countries especially, in Viet Nam therefore, more empirical research on teacher demotivation is needed This study was endeavored to fill this gap Some previous studies on investigating the demotivating factors have been conducted in different EFL teaching contexts (Japan, Indonesia, Greece and Turkey) and the findings, to some extends, are consistent to each other This encourages the researcher to conduct her own study to investigate the possible cause of teacher demotivation and compare whether Vietnamese EFL teachers and especially, EFL teachers at VTEC, a small college, in

a newly developed city are also demotivated by six factors: teaching profession,

curriculum, working environment, students and their parents, colleagues and school administrators, and duties besides teaching as teachers in other countries

Moreover, so far, there have been a few researches or even none of this topic exploring the effect of personal aspects such as professional life and family life on teacher motivation Additionally, most of them have examined demotivation among teachers in general without making any comparison between different groups of teacher: gender or qualification, their position at school The present study aims to focus on one of these above variables which have been neglected in the previous studies and only study by Sugino (2010) investigated the role of gender, and one conducted by Teddy Banda Mwanza investigated the role of position (administrator, officer or basic teacher) in relation to demotivation

Demotivation can appear at any context and level of language and teaching, with more than four years of teaching English at VTEC, the researcher has recognized the existence and effect of this phenomenon From the interesting theories and the reality of teaching and learning English context at VTEC, there opens a need for the researcher to conduct a study on demotivating factors to the EFL teachers

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CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 2.1 Research questions restated

This study aims at finding answers to the following questions:

1 What are demotivating factors among EFL teachers at VTEC?

2 What factors most significantly demotivate EFL teachers at VTEC?

3 What are differences of demotivating factors among EFL teachers in terms

of their gender?

2.2 Justification for the use of Survey Research design

The research was carried out in order to investigate the factors that demotivate EFL teachers at VTEC and also to explore the possible differences on demotivating factors between male and female teachers Therefore, survey research would be the most useful method for this study because of its following strengths:

Firstly, its advantages was discussed by Pricilla (2005) as follows: “Surveys are capable of obtaining information from large samples of the population They are also well suited to gathering demographic data that describe the composition of the sample […] Surveys are inclusive in the types and number of variables that can be studied, require minimal in investment to develop and administer, and are relatively easy for making generalizations […] Surveys can also elicit information about

strengths of survey research, which were (a) surveys can complete structured

questions with many stakeholders within a relatively short time frame; (b) surveys can be completed by telephone, mail, fax, or in-person; (c) it is quantifiable and generalizable to an entire population if the population is sampled appropriately; (d) standardized, structured questionnaire minimizes interview bias; (e) tremendous volume of information can be collected in short period of time; (f) surveys can take less time to analyze than qualitative data

2.3 Research setting and Participants

The research participants of this study are 7 teachers, 3 males and 4 females who have experienced in teaching English as a foreign language at Vinh Phuc Technical – Economic College These language teachers ranged from 25 to 45 years

in age The participants also varied greatly in term of the length of their teaching experiences More than half of teachers (4) had 10 to 15 years of teaching

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experience The rest had from 3 to 7 years of teaching Noticeably, all three males are concurrently English teachers and Deans of one Division All of them, except one woman, are married and have children, especially, two females have three children, one has three sons and another has three daughters They are not randomly chosen, they are all EFL teachers at the college where the researcher is working Those are whom the researcher had already been acquainted with Before delivering the questionnaire, they were asked if they were willing to participate in the study after having made clear that collected data would not be seen by anyone else but the researcher herself Two of them are now my former colleagues because, after answering the questionnaire, they received the decision to move to a new school, one of them moved to a primary school in a small and remote district, the other woman moved to a secondary next to her house

2.4 Data collection instruments

This is a survey research, therefore, the two main sources of data were collected from the questionnaire and semi- structured interviews

2.4.1 Questionnaire

From the possible data collection instruments, a questionnaire was chosen as the most suitable way to collect data as it was considered an effective way of collecting data quickly in term of affective dimension of teaching and learning as belief, attitudes, motivation and references (Richard and Lockhard, 1994) and it also allowed investigating demotivation by both qualitative and quantitative means The design of the questionnaire was based upon the experiences gained after reading other similar questionnaires and on the findings of previous research (Doyle & Kim, 1999; Hettiarachchi, 2010; Aydin, 2012; Konstadina Tziavaa, 2003) that measured demotivation of teachers at different teaching levels and contexts It was directly

adapted from the format of the questionnaire of Sugino, 2010 - Teacher

Demotivational Factors in the Japanese Language Teaching Context However; the

researcher‟s personal experience of an EFL teacher at a small college enabled her to adjust the existed format questionnaires both to the job of the English teacher as well as to the reality of EFL teaching context at VTEC The questionnaire was composed of two main parts, began with a paragraph thanking the teachers for their cooperation in advance and ensuring them that their answers would not be seen by anyone else except the researcher The first part aims to collect information of respondents including gender, age, marital status, number of children, teaching

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qualification and length of teaching experiences The next part was used to elicit teacher‟s opinion about demotivating factors in their teaching process The participants are required to rate each item on a five – point Likert scale format by circling the response (1,2,3,4 and 5) which was coded for different levels of demotivate or other categories

The structure of the demotivation questionnaire:

Part I - Personal information: gender, age, marital status, number of children, teaching qualification and length of teaching experience

Part II- Demotivating factors:

The questionnaire consists of 37 factors and one open question for participants to list their own other factors (See Appendix 1) For every question, informants are asked to tick the number that express best their view

Thirty – seven questions of the survey are grouped into 3 main parts:

2.1 Student – related factors (Questions from 1 to 8)

2.2 Working environment (consist of some subcategories)

a Facilities and materials (Question 9 to 14)

b Workload (Questions 15 to 18)

c Salary (Questions 19 to 21)

d Colleague relationship (Questions 22 to 24)

e Administrative pressure (Questions 25 to 29)

2.3 Personal aspects

a Professional life (Questions 30 to 33)

b Family life (Questions 34 to 37)

And question 38 is an open question which gives respondents a chance to add their own other factors

2.4.2 Interviews

Although questionnaire has various advantages, they do, however, have some limitations (Dörnyei and Taguchi 2010: 6-9) such as the answers may be simple or superficial, it limits the depth of the investigation, and respondents may choose unreliable answers or leave the questions unanswered Therefore, after getting the data from questionnaire, the interviews were carried with 7 teachers to get more in-depth information about research questions and to discuss further about the items raised in the questionnaire A total of seven interviews were conducted

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teaching so they might be less stressful and have more time to take part in the interviews Five of the interviews are formal and face – to - face interviews taking place in a quiet room, two of them must be conducted through emails as two females moved to another school at the beginning of May In conducting the interviews, the researcher used a semi – structured interview format taking account the findings of the previous studies or similar interview questions (Connies, 2000; Hay, 2009, Banda Mwanza, 2010; Hetticrachchi, 2013 and Rahma Sari, 2013) Their consents to audio – record the interviews was also obtained During the interviews, the participants were allowed to use either English or Vietnamese However, only two of them used English to share their experiences and opinions and the rest used Vietnamese because their speaking skill is not very good All Vietnamese remarks or answers from the interviews were translated into English words by the researcher Each interview lasted about 15 or 20 minutes The interviews mostly included 10 questions (see Appendix 2) to find out the how they feel about teaching, their favourite method of English teaching, how they spend time after work, their opinion about students, the number of lesson plans per week, the extra – duties that they have to cover beside teaching, what demotivating factor is salient, their view toward classroom facilities and whether they are stressful before students‟ English exams and whether they have thought of changing their job

As stated above, at the beginning of May, two females were agreed to move to another school (one secondary school and one primary school) To investigate the reasons why they changed working place, their job satisfaction, factors that demotivated them most at VTEC and how their work in new school is, the researcher designed four questions to ask these two women (See Appendix 3) However, because

it is quite hard to meet them directly, their answering is done through email, and after receiving their reply, the researcher also contacted them by phone to make clear anything ambiguous

2.5 Data collection procedures

In the study, the researcher replaced the three males‟ name by pseudonym: ET1, ET2, ET3 The other two females who changed their working place are ET4 and ET5, and the rest are ET6 and ET7 The data collection procedures were conducted from the first week of April, 2014

Firstly, the researcher delivered questionnaire to 7 EFL teachers to gather general data about the informants, and their attitudes toward 37 demotivating

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statements after they had been told the purposes and guided how to complete it carefully Each participant took about 30 to 45 minutes to finish the questionnaire, they were encouraged to ask the researcher anything they did not understand clearly so it is not difficult for the researcher to recollect the questionnaire from all participants

After that, more deep – information about demotivating factors was gained

by interviews These seven teachers were recruited for the interviews The time allocation for the interview is around 15 to 20 minutes which is considered enough for the participants to answer the questions had already prepared by the researcher The questions aimed at investigating more insight information about the matters that could not be answered clearly by questionnaire

To avoid the weakness of remembering what had been talked during the conversation, the researcher used a recorder to record all the conversations between the researcher as an interviewer five teachers as interviewees This method is considered to be the most feasible tool (Gay, 2003)

All collected data were firstly read through to get the overall sense, and then the interview data was coded Coding was related to assign some of shorthand designation to various aspects of your data (Merriam, 1998) which could help the researcher to get back or retrieve to specific data Then, the findings were written in forms of reflective notes and field notes for the researcher easy to follow before displaying the information in forms of tables and figures

2.6 Data Analysis

The survey method was adopted in this study This collected data from the questionnaire was coded and analyzed using SPSS version 16.0 The descriptive statistics include means, standard deviations were used to determine demotivating factors among EFL teachers One - way ANOVA with descriptive and level of significance was used to exam the differences of demotivating factors in term of gender The significance was set at 05

The data collected from the interviews was analyzed qualitatively All significant statements relevant to the research questions were found and listed to deepen understanding and explanation of data