An Emprirical Study On Junior High School Students' Motivational Regulation Strategies In English Learning(MRSEL)

Motivational regulation strategies are very important for second language acquisition and foreign language teaching and have been paid certain attention to.However,until now,most relative researches about Motivational Regulation Strategies in English Learning(MRSEL)took senior high school students or college students as the research objects(eg.Li Kun,2009,2011,2013;Gao Yue,Liu Honggang,2014;Liu Honggang,2014),which makes motivational regulation strategies in English learning area be ignored.Therefore,this research,combining questionnaire and interview,takes 765 junior high school students who are from A,B and C school respectively as the research objects,and investigates the following questions,including:(1)What kind of motivational regulation strategies that junior high school students use in their English Learning?(2)What's the difference of gender and grade on MRSEL?(3)What's the relationship between students' MRSEL and their English learning motivation?According to the results,it is found that:(1)Junior high school students use English motivational regulation strategies with different frequencies.There are four strategies that are often used,including performance self-talk(M=4.58;SD=1.00),meta-cognition control(M=4.34;SD=0.98),self-efficacy(M=4.32;SD=0.99),interest enhancement(M=4.09;SD=1.02);and three strategies are used less often,including attribution(M=3.60;SD=0.92),cross-cultural communication(M=3.52;SD=1.22)and self-reward(M=3.41;SD=1.33).(2)Gender and grade are two factors that affect junior high school students' usage of Motivational Regulation Strategies in English Learning(MRSEL).Female students are much better at using Motivational Regulation Strategies in English Learning(MRSEL)than male students(t(737)=-4.76,p<0.05);the students from the first grade use these strategies more frequently than the students from the second grade and the third grade,but there is no obvious difference between the students from grade two and grade three on the usage of these strategies.(3)Junior high school students' English motivational regulation strategies are obviously correlated to English learning motivations.Six of these strategies,including interest enhancement,performance self-talk,self-reward,self-efficacy,cross-cultural communication and meta-cognition control are positively correlated to both interior motivation and exterior motivation.There exists no obvious correlation between attribution and interior motivation,but this strategy is lowly positive correlated to exterior motivation and overall motivation.According to the results obtained in this research,in order to increase students' English learning motivation,it is suggested that:(1)English teachers should give students some education and training about English motivational regulation strategies.(2)English teachers need to pay much attention to the individual characteristics in the process of motivational regulation strategies training.(3)Junior high school students should follow their English teachers' tips and use these motivational regulation strategies consciously and frequently in the process of learning English.