A scale of Turkish preparatory school university students' demotivational factors towards learning English

The present study aims to develop and validate a survey instrument to measure university preparatory school students' demotivation levels as well as investigating the sources of demotivation. In accordance with measuring students' demotivational level, the items of this survey are developed based on a review of literature on student motivation/demotivation and the content analysis of compositions written by students learning English at a preparatory school. 32 items are included in the survey titled 'A Scale of Turkish Preparatory School University Students' Demotivational Factors Towards Learning English', which was administered to 206 university preparatory school students in Eskişehir, Turkey. The data were submitted to the internal consistency analysis to determine reliability of the instrument and confirmatory factor analysis to validate the scale. The results showed the construct of preparatory school students' demotivation is multi-dimensional with four factors including personal reasons, past experiences, features of preparatory school program and the form of instruction. After the validation procedures, the data were collected online from 1105 students in various preparatory school programs in Turkey. The findings yielded that proficiency level had a significant effect on students' demotivational levels, and also a significant relationship was found between university type and demotivation deriving from past experiences and features of preparatory school program. As a result, by considering the overall findings of the current study, it might be suggested that awareness of demotivating factors and sources of demotivation need to be raised for the language learners as well as their teachers and program developers. Keywords: Motivation, Demotivation, Sources of demotivation, Demotivating factors,Scale validation.