The factors demotivating secondary school students towards learning English

The aim of this research is to determine the student opinions about the factors that demotivate secondary school students towards learning English. The research was conducted by interview method, which is one of the qualitative research patterns. The data collection tool is a semi-structured interview form developed by the researcher and consisting of 13 open-ended questions. The sample of the research consists of 20 secondary school students studying in Van Province in the 2022-2023 academic year. One English and one Turkish expert teacher were consulted for the analysis of the data and a descriptive analysis of the answers to the open-ended questions was made. The obtained categories and sub-codes were compared, and using the reliability formula of Miles and Huberman (1994), it was found that the consensus rate of researchers and coders in the categories and sub-codes was 88%. According to the results of the research, factors such as the students' attitudes and behaviors of their teachers and friends in the classroom, teachers' bias towards students, student noises due to classroom sizes, the difficult English language structure and mispronunciation of English words, the general preference of the narration method in the lessons and the teachers' continuous English speaking in the lessons, less preference for games, activities and visual materials, as well as students' prejudices and beliefs about English were found to be the reasons for being demotivated in learning English. Various suggestions were offered to educators based on the research findings. Keywords: Learning Motivation, Demotivation, Foreign Language, Student Opinions, Secondary School