the most important demotivating factors among efl teachers in private english language institutes in mashhad

just as motivation is important in sla research, demotivation constitutes an important factor, too. there are many studies done on demotivation and burnout of teachers. many of these studies have been conducted on one or two aspects of english instruction. consequently, there are few studies which have been done on more than two aspects of english teaching. the aim of this study is to find out the most important demotivating factors for efl teachers in iranian english language institutes. this study investigated teacher demotivation among 93 english language institute teachers in mashhad. the researcher utilized two instruments for his study. the first one was a questionnaire consisted of 37 items. some questions in the questionnaire used a five-point likert scale format adopted from the teacher job satisfaction questionnaire (tjsq) by hughes (2006) and the others were added by sugino (2010). the questions were divided in four sections, which included (1) students attitudes, (2) class facilities, teaching materials, and curriculum, (3) working conditions, and (4) human relationships for teacher demotivation. cronbach’s alpha based on standardized items calculated for the 37 items yielded a reliability of .93. then four efl teachers were selected to be interviewed by the researcher. the format of interview was semi-structured. the results of t- test indicated that there was no significant difference in the teachers demotivation with respect to their gender. the overall results showed that the top seven demotivating factors that would cause teacher demotivation were: 1. students do not do group work, 2. students forget to do homework., 3. students use cell-phones, 4. students are not interested in studying, 5. students give negative comments, 6. students are not interested in foreign language 7. students forget to bring textbooks/dictionaries. the items that would least demotivate teachers were: 1. the pay is low, 2. abilities differ greatly in one class, 3. there is no bonus, 4. the time of research is not enough, 5. there is discrepancy between teacher’s expectation and students’, 6. the fund of research is not enough, 7. the administrations appreciation is little.