Motivational Strategies To Stimulate English SRL Of Independent College Students

Self-regulated learning (SRL) is regarded as the highest level of students’ cognitive participation in the class and as the target for all the efforts made to stimulate learning motivation. As important aspects concerning to SRL, motivational regulation and motivational components in the social cognitive model is getting more and more attentions. The present research is to explore the motivational strategies taking effects on stimulating SRL of independent college students, which is aimed to provide some references to English teaching. Through implementing a series of motivational strategies being helpful for motivational regulation, the author monitored and observed the students’ changes happened to motivational regulation, then conclude the motivational regulation strategies being helpful for students’ motivational regulation and SRL.To investigate the motivational regulation of independent college students, the following research questions were formulated:1) What are the overall patterns of independent college students’ use of self-regulated motivational strategies? Can the use of motivational strategies be changed through motivational strategies training?2) What are the overall patterns of independent college students’ motivational components? Can students’ motivational components be changed through motivational strategies training?3) What motivational strategies can stimulate SLA effectively through changing students’ use of motivational regulation strategies and motivational components?4) Is there any difference between the students with high proficiency and low proficiency concerning to reactions to motivational strategies?In the present study, the author mainly introduces the perspective of motivational regulation and social cognitive model of motivation, which are all important aspects concerning SRL. The present study is an experimental study in which motivational strategies were used to enhance the students’SRL ability through changing their use of motivational regulation strategies and their motivational components. The study is consisted of the survey study and the case study. The survey study is to investigate the overall patterns of independent college students’use of motivational regulation strategies and motivational components in the pretest and make a contrast between the survey study in pretest and posttest to find out whether there are changes happened to the students’use of motivational regulation strategies and motivational components.59students in an independent college where the author taught participated in the survey study. The case study is to explore what motivational strategies taking effects on promoting SRL. Six students in the independent college participated in the case study conducted through interviews and diaries. The present study has yielded the following important findings:Firstly, some motivational strategies taking effects in stimulating SRL have been found, which is listed in the part of conclusion.Secondly, individual differences should also be paid attention to, as students’ English proficiency will lead to different reactions to the same motivational strategies. Competition can enhance the use of performance self-talk of the students with high English proficiency, but will do harms to self-efficacy of the students with low English proficiency. Students with high English proficiency are more adept at taking advantage of the motivational strategies taught by teachers to regulate their motivation in order to enhance their abilities to SRL.Thirdly, though too much emphasis on extrinsic motivation will hinder the development of intrinsic motivation, appropriate extrinsic motivation can help students make use of motivational strategies like task value enhancement, through which they can concentrate on learning tasks better. So extrinsic motivation which could be developed with intrinsic motivation together, should not be neglected at all. Fourthly, negative-based incentive increases students’learning anxiety, so it is not encouraged to be used. In the contrary, motivational strategies that can reduce students’learning anxiety should be encouraged to use.Last but not the least, control of learning belief is a very important factor to influence students’motivation intensity, those who have strong learning belief is high in motivation intensity. Monitor students’progress and give them positive feedbacks is a very effective strategy to promote students’control of learning belief.