A Survey On Chinese Non-english Major Undergraduates’ Motivational Regulation Strategy In English Learning

Motivational regulation is an important aspect of Self-regulated Learning and is thoughtto have a great impact on English learning; but unfortunately, compared with the other aspectsof SRL, there is little research on the motivational regulation, especially for Chinesenon-English major undergraduates. Though the critical importance of motivation to foreignlanguage learning has been recognized in the world of foreign languages, most of the previousresearches were conducted from a static perspective, so there lacks a comprehensiveacquaintance about motivation. The present study attempts to make a systematic survey aboutthe situation of Chinese college students’ using motivational regulation strategies in theprocess of English learning and their impact on English achievements.To get a further knowledge about the situation of using motivational regulationstrategies among Chinese college students, we conducted this research on the followingquestions:1) What is the overall pattern in using MRS?2) Are there any differences in the useof MRS in terms of English proficiency? If yes, what are they?3) Are there any differences inthe use of MRS in terms of gender and specialty? If yes, what are they?This research is composed of two parts: a survey and a case study. The survey is mainlyto get an initial knowledge about the situation of using motivational regulation strategiesamong Chinese non-English major undergraduates, and its relation with English achievements,gender and specialty category. The questionnaire whose question items come from Li Kun(“regulation research”) includes eight motivational regulation strategies.422non-Englishmajor undergraduates from five different colleges participated in this survey. SPSS11.5wasused to analyze all the statistics. The case study conducted in the form of interview is to get afurther knowledge about the findings of the survey. Six non-English major undergraduateswere involved in the interview.We found that Chinese non-English undergraduates used various motivationalregulation strategies to regulate their learning motivation which was related to Englishproficiency, gender and specialty category. The high achievers tent to use more motivationalregulation strategies than those low achievers. This finding is generally consistent withprevious findings. Females took all the MRSs more frequently than males; learners in arts employed more strategies than learners in science in the frequency of using six of thestrategies. In addition, the case study found that the low achievers encountered moremotivational problems in their English study, however, high achievers tent to take morefrequently motivational regulation strategies when they encountered problems; high achieverstook seven of the eight motivational regulation strategies which were mentioned in this studyto regulate their motivation when encountered motivational problems, while low achieversused only three of them.The research will have practical implications to foreign language teaching; what’s more,bringing the motivational regulation research into foreign language teaching will not onlymake up the defect of language teaching research, but also give a new learning perspective forlearners. Not only should the foreign language educators pay more attention to traininglearners’ ability of regulating motivation, but also the learners should realize that and beactive to regulate their motivation at proper time.