The study aims to explore factors influencing middle school students' motivation to learn. Instead of assuming a general decline in motivation, it objectively examines the issue through research, identifying key influences such as curriculum difficulty, teaching methods, and external pressures. By analyzing survey data from eighth-grade students at Chu Van An Middle School, the study provides evidence-based insights into the challenges affecting student engagement in learning. This research aims to identify the factors affecting the learning motivation of middle school students to help them become more engaged in their studies. In this study, the author designed a survey questionnaire of 8 questions combined with a quantitative method to identify the factors causing a lack of interest in learning among middle school students. The survey was conducted at Chu Van An Middle School in Binh Duong Province. The survey participants were 375 eighth-grade students in the 2024-2025 academic year. According to the survey, 184 male students felt uninterested in learning due to various factors, accounting for 49.07%; 157 female students, accounting for 41.87%; and 34 students of other genders, accounting for 9.07%. Given this situation, it is urgent to propose feasible solutions to help students regain interest in learning.

Vocational guidance plays an important role in career orientation for secondary students. Before entering the secondary school graduation exam, schools around the country start to organize career counseling. This urgent issue drives parents, teachers, and students up the wall, especially students are the learners who directly suffer from this consequence leading to students’ mental health issues. The study aim is to find out the optimal solution that helps students overcome the high pressure of vocational counseling before the graduation exam. In this inquiry, quantitative research is the best method to focus on surveying students’ awareness based on comparative research which is typical research, and via this exploration to evaluate the research object comprehensively. The comparative research is applied in this article to discover the differences between vocational guidance before and after the 10th-grade entrance exam towards poorer and lower-scoring students. This study is put into operation at Chu Van An secondary school – in Binh Duong province – academic year 2023-2024 and the students of grade 9 are research objects which are chosen to answer survey questions. According to survey tables, more than 93.3% of students with poorer and lower scores select vocational guidance after the secondary school graduation exam and 6.7% of students take the reverse one. What we need to think about is whether this way of present career counseling is feasible