Demotivating and Remotivating Factors among MA Students of TEFL: An Iranian Case

The present study sought to investigate demotivating and remotivating factors among Iranian MA students of TEFL. The participants included 170 male and female (Male= 97, Female= 73) Iranian MA students of TEFL randomly chosen among the students of 10 most well-known state universities of Iran. To collect the qualitative data, interviews were conducted on 20 students, two from each university. Subsequently, a 40-item demotivating questionnaire was constructed and administered to 150 students, 15 from each university. The findings indicated that ‘economic problems’ was the most salient demotivating factor for the participants of this study. The second important demotivating factor was ‘future pessimism’. The third and the fourth demotivating factors were ‘professors’ characteristics’ and ‘syllabus design’, respectively. The order of importance of other demotivating factors was as the following: ‘curriculum decisions’, ‘scoring system’, ‘administrative decisions’, ‘facilities’ and ‘classroom environment’. Furthermore, remotivating strategies were investigated based on what students proposed as ways to get rid of the existing demotivating factors.