A Study On The Use Of Motivational Regulation Strategies In English Learniing Of Senior High School Students

Motivation is an important factor affecting foreign language learning. It is not static but dynamic.Foreign language learning is an effort-demanding task and a long-term process and in the process learnerswill inevitably be faced with lack of drive or insufficient motivation. In this case, the learners need to takecertain regulation strategy to stick to learning. Thus, motivational regulation is regarded as an importantaspect of self-regulated learning. However, in the field of foreign language learning, the motivationalregulation is not given enough attention and the studies related to motivational regulation is rare. Therefore,the present study is aimed to explore the use of motivational regulation strategies on the part of senior highschool students in English learning.This present study consists of a questionnaire and an interview.105students from Hebi Senior HighSchool took part in the survey, of which six students were again invited to participate in the subsequentinterviews. The survey is aimed to examine the overall pattern, gender differences and the differences ofEnglish proficiency in the use of motivational regulation in English learning of Hebi Senior High Schoolstudents. The interview is intended to serve as the supplement and validation of the survey, making afurther analysis of the differences of motivational regulation between high English proficiency and lowEnglish proficiency learners.The results indicate that senior high school students use eight kinds of strategies to regulate their ownmotivation in English learning. They are task value enhancement, interest enhancement, performanceself-talk, mastery self-talk, self-reward, negative-based incentive, volitional control, self-efficacyenhancement. Taken as a whole, the frequency of the use of the eight strategies reaches a medium to a highlevel. The frequency of the use of task value enhancement reaches the high level, while the remainingseven strategies including interest enhancement, performance self-talk, mastery self-talk, self-reward,negative-based incentive, volitional control, self-efficacy enhancement all reach the level of medium. Thereare differences between the male students and the female students in using the motivational regulationstrategies. And the results indicate that the female students use the motivational regulation strategies morefrequently than the male students. Significant differences in using motivational regulation strategies arefound between the three groups of students with different English proficiencies. The higher the students’ English proficiency, the more frequent the students’ use of motivational regulation strategies. High Englishachievers can better regulate their motivation than low achievers.In conclusion, the present study has found that senior high school students use a variety of strategies toregulate their motivation in English learning and these motivational regulation strategies have importantimpact on the English learning process and achievements.