A Survey On Use Of Motivational Regulation Strategies By English Learners In Vocational Colleges

Self-regulation is the effective way of promoting self learning, improving the quality of learning, forming learning ability and potential, and affecting the learning process to a certain extent. At present domestic researchers have conducted some researches and exploration on self-regulation and realize the importance of motivation in foreign language learning. While there are already some rigorous researches on what strategies foreign language learners use in their learning process, we need more studies on how the students in the medical vocational colleges use strategies to regulate their motivation in their local context.This study is to survey whether and how medical vocational college students in the process of English learning use motivational regulation strategies and more specifically, to find out the differences in using these strategies by high achievers and the low achievers. This study proposes the following research questions: 1. To what extent do the vocational college students use strategies to regulate their motivation in the learning process? 2. What strategies do they use to regulate their motivation when learning the foreign language? 3. What are the differences between the students who have different PRETCO-A scores in using strategies to regulate their learning motivation?To answer these questions, the researcher uses both questionnaire and interview in the present study. First, we randomly extract 372 students from medical vocational colleges in four cities in Hebei province as the survey subjects. After we collect the questionnaires, we conduct the descriptive data analysis and independent sample t-test by means of SPSS software. To further compare the different ways different students use the strategies, we make interviews with three high achievers and three low achievers. The results of the survey study have shown that the medical vocational college students apply many motivational regulation strategies with the relative frequency to regulate their motivations during the English learning. Four strategies including mastery self-talk strategy, negative-based incentive strategy, volitional control strategy and self efficacy strategy are more frequently used by the Chinese vocational college students, while interest enhancement strategy, performance self-talk strategy, self reward strategy and task value enhancement strategy are less used. There is a visible difference between the high and low score groups for all the strategies except self reward. The higher English level the English learners have, the more motivational regulation strategies they tend to use. From the interviews, we find that low achievers tend to come across more motivational problems than high achievers. Compared with the low achievers, high achievers adopt more strategies and use them more frequently to regulate their motivations.This study has a certain guiding significance in the teaching reform of foreign language teachers. It is necessary for foreign language teachers to awaken and strengthen the consciousness of learners’ self-regulation in the teaching activities. This study shows what strategies are more effective when we cultivate students’ ability of motivational regulation.