the relationship between using language learning strategies, learners’ optimism, educational status, duration of learning and demotivation

with the growth of more humanistic approaches towards teaching foreign languages, more emphasis has been put on learners’ feelings, emotions and individual differences. one of the issues in teaching and learning english as a foreign language is demotivation. the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the components of language learning strategies, optimism, duration of learning, learners’ educational status, and demotivtion. the instruments used for data collection were three questionnaires, sill questionnaire (oxford, 1990), optimism questionnaire (ganji, 2005), and demotivation questionnaire (sakai & kikuchi, 2009). the participants of the study were 142 english learners of respina-talk english institute in tehran. in order to get information about duration of learning and learners’ educational status, the students were asked to answer some questions on a separate sheet of paper attached to the questionnaires. the data gathered by means of questionnaires were subjected to correlation coefficient. based on the results obtained, there is a significant relationship between using memory strategies and demotivation due to the test scores (-0.172, ? <0.05); there is a significant relationship between affective strategies and demotivation due to the content (-0.182, ? <0.05); and using metacognitive strategies has a significant relationship with occurring demotivation because of the content (-0.230, ? <0.01), methodology (-0.211, ? <0.05), lack of intrinsic motivation (-0.216, ? <0.05) and test scores(-0.211, ? <0.05). in addition, using social strategies has a significant relationship with demotivation due to the methodology (-0.197, ? <0.05) and test scores (0.193, ? <0.05). however, the findings revealed that, there is no significant relationship between optimism and demotivation (-0.132), duration of learning and demotivation (0.044), and learners’ educational status and demotivation (-0.103).