A Comparative Study Of Learners’ Motivation And Online Self-Regulation Between Students At Two Universities In Beijing And Taipei Of China

With the development of information technology and the popularity of smartphones,tablets and other electronic devices,online applications have been widely used in various situations of work and study.Educational researchers have already paid their attention to the teaching practices in online environments,among which language learning is one of the essential fields of online educational research.In large-scale online language learning environments,students’motivation and their ability of self-regulation play a significant role in promoting their learning outcomes.As a result,it is of great importance to conduct in-depth analysis to probe the status quo and structural relationships between the two constructs.The current study explored English learning motivation and self-regulation in online learning environments among students from two universities in Beijing and Taipei,China,which facilitates the quality of online English teaching and is beneficial to the cooperation between cross-Straits higher education.This study was conducted in two comprehensive universities,Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications(BUPT)and Taiwan University of Science and Technology(TUST).449 participants with were invited to join the study.Quantitative and qualitative research methods were mainly adopted to investigate students’ English learning motivation and online self-regulation and probe their different features concerning these two constructs.Two adapted questionnaires,namely,Online Language Learning Motivation(OLLM)and Online Self-regulated English Learning(OSEL)were used to collect the quantitative data.At the same time,22 students from two universities were invited to conduct one-on-one interviews to discuss their experience,motivation,and methods when learning English online.After obtaining the consent of the participants,the researchers recorded the interviews and used these files for follow-up analysis.Confirmatory factor analysis,multivariate analysis of variance,Person’s correlation analysis,and stepwise regression analysis were conducted to cope with the collected data.Moreover,responses to the interview questions were combined when analyzing the predictive relationships between students’ OLLM and OSEL.The research results could be divided into three parts according to the three research questions.Firstly,the results confirmed that college students’English learning motivation was composed of five factors,namely "Online English Learning Experience","Cultural Interest","Instrumentality-promotion","Instrumentality-prevention",and "Others’Expectations".Meanwhile,their online self-regulation is comprised of eight dimensions,namely,"Goal setting","Time Management","Environment Structuring","Help Seeking","Task Strategies","Self-evaluation","Metacognitive Regulation" and "Affective Regulation".Secondly,there is no significant difference between BUPT and TUST students in the perception of their online self-regulation.However,as for the construct of English learning motivation,the students in BUPT presented stronger motivational beliefs in "Online English Learning Experience","Cultural Interest" and“Instrumentality-promotion" than TUST students.Last but not least,the results of Pearson correlation analysis and stepwise regression analysis indicated that there were intricate correlations and predictive associations between college students’OLLM and OSEL."Others’Expectations"could almost positively predict all online self-regulation factors for students in both universities.Besides,for BUPT students,"Cultural Interest" and "Instrumentality-promotion" appeared to be the more positive factors,indicating a stronger Ideal L2 Self.In the meantime,for TUST students,"Cultural Interest" presented the weakest predictive power while the other four OLLM dimensions presented similar levels of positive association for they could significantly predict three or four OSEL factors.The regression results were further explained by interview responses with students from both universities.Generally speaking,the significant predictive power of TUST students’ OLLM factors on OSEL was weaker than that of BUPT students.This research also provided several pedagogical implications for future studies.First of all,English language teachers and linguists should adjust their teaching methods and styles in a technology-enhanced language learning environment.Training systems for English language teachers’ technological literacy and online language learning platforms are expected to be established in order to improve students’ online learning experience.Teachers under the requirement of providing online self-regulated teaching intervention in English classes should explore relevant skills and ways of improvement when using technology in their teaching practices.In addition,English teachers in BUPT are encouraged to promote students’ intrinsic interest in the cultures and customs of English-speaking countries and raise their awareness of cross-cultural communication.While teachers in TUST could set more challenging learning tasks online and constantly stimulate students’ instrumental motivation for language learning through in-time evaluation and feedback.Last but not least,college teachers on both sides of the Taiwan Straits could guide students to adopt a variety of self-regulation strategies in online English learning so that they would be able to take the initiative to manage their learning time and learning environments spontaneously.Relevant studies need to be further enriched and expanded,so as to provide empirical evidence for researchers to further understand the relationships between these two constructs.