Factors that contribute to secondary school students demotivation in learning ESL and the ways to overcome it / Abida Mohamed

ABSTRACT
English language is a global language which spoken around the world. Although English is used as a second language in Maldives, it is one of the compulsory subjects taught in all the English medium schools but a large number of students in secondary grades are seen de motivated to learn English.
Therefore, the purpose of this study is to find out the factors that contribute to secondary school students' de motivation in learning ESL, the ways to overcome it and the challenges that teachers face in motivating them. The main research question is; why do secondary level students lack motivation to learn ESL and how can they become motivated. It is a qualitative case study where purposive sampling technique is used. This includes 4 semi-structured interviews from secondary grade 9 and 10 students and 4 interviews from the teachers who teach in these grades. The findings of the research were analysed using content analysis process and the results revealed that the main causes of student demotivation are the policy followed in the schools to conduct tasks, which include school policy and the use of IGCSE 0'Level syllabus, the large number of students in ESL classes, lack of time to conduct varieties of tasks according to the students' abilities and interest. In addition, student amotivation and their attitude towards ESL were the main challenges that teachers face in ESL classes to motivate the students. Moreover, the findings show that the relationships in the class is quite strong and teachers try different methods to motivate students in ESL periods but still they need to conduct more varieties of tasks, such as problem solving tasks, learner centred tasks and provide more opportunities for the students to use language, which according to the finding are limited in the current ESL classes of the research school.
Keywords: de motivation, motivation, IGCSE, ESL, challenges