An Experimental Study On How Self-monitoring Ability Affect Goal Orientation In College PE Learning

The present study, based on extensive literature and the author's own experience as a PE teacher for nearly 10 years, shows that the reason for students' pursuit for high scores and negligence of motor skills is lack of reasonable goal-orientation. In order for the college students to change the unreasonable goal-orientation, PE teachers must make efforts to change the teaching content and teaching methods, to create a favorable class atmosphere, and to improve students' self-monitoring ability for the class assignments rather than their pursuit for high scores. This study reviews and summarizes the related researches concerning self-monitoring ability and goal-orientation. Meanwhile, the study works out a scale of self-monitoring ability in physical education learning for college students. By means of questionnaire and experiments on 111 subjects (freshmen) from Shanghai Dianji University, the present study measures their self-monitoring ability in physical education learning and goal-orientation before and after the experiment. A contrastive study is conducted to verify the hypothesis that the improvement of students' self-monitoring ability in physical education learning can change the unreasonable goal-orientation. The following conclusion can be drawn from the present study:The scale of self-monitoring ability in physical education learning for college students (optional item of table tennis) enjoys high reliability and validity. This scale can measure students'level of self-monitoring ability from three dimensions (planning, executing and adjusting).There is no significant difference between the experimental group and control group in terms of self-monitoring ability in physical education learning before the experiment, but after the experiment, there is. The self-monitoring abilities in physical education learning before and after the experiment for both groups differ significantly. For the experimental group, the significant difference in self-monitoring ability before and after the experiment can be attributed to intervention, while for the control group to maturity.Before the experiment, task orientation and ego orientation for both control and experimental groups are not significantly different, but after the experiment, both groups show significant difference in task orientation, with the control group scoring higher than experiment group, but not in ego orientation. Task orientations, but not ego orientations for experiment group before and after the experiment differ significantly. For control group, task orientations and ego orientations before and after the experiment do not differ significantly.The analysis of self-monitoring ability for physical education learning shows insignificant difference for the experimental group (11 persons) and control group (10 persons) before the experiment and significant difference after the experiment. Further study on the 11 subjects whose ego orientations change shows significant change of self-monitoring ability in five dimensions—awareness, method, feedback preparation, and remedy, with the former three being executive factors, thus leading to the conclusion that executive factors play an essential part in the change of ego orientation.Different self-monitoring ability for physical education learning has different impact on the goal orientation of college students. After the experiment,11 subjects from the experimental group (57 persons) change their ego orientations to task orientation,3 from low ego orientation and low task orientation to task orientation (1 subject) and high ego and high task orientation. For controlling group, only two subjects change their orientation, i.e., from low ego and low task orientation to ego orientation, and no change occurs in orientation for the remaining 52 students. 6. Both the experimental group and the control group know little about table tennis before the experiment. However, after the experiment, the experimental group becomes more skillful in table tennis blocking and shooting than the control group. 7. It has been proved that there is positive correlation between self-monitoring ability and sports performance, and negative correlation among self-monitoring ability, sports performance and ego-orientation. On the other hand, the results fail to prove the positive correlation among self-monitoring ability, sports performance and task-orientation.