An Investigation On Junior High School Students' Motivational Regulation Strategies In English Learning

Motivational regulation strategies are very important for second language acquisition and foreign language teaching and have been paid attention.However,most relative researches about English Motivational Regulation Strategies took college students and senior high school students as the research subjects.However,junior high school students' using motivational regulation strategies in English learning can be ignored.Therefore,the research,combining questionnaire and interview,takes 324 junior high school students who are from Tang Shan and Shi Jiazhuang respectively as the research subjects to investigate the following questions,including: What kind of motivational regulation strategies that junior high school students use in their English learning? What is overall pattern in using of motivational regulation strategies? What are differences in using of motivational regulation Strategies in terms of grade?The questionnaire was conducted to investigate three research questions.After the data of questionnaire were fully analyzed,the interviewer selected 10 students after finishing the questionnaire randomly to check out and illustrate the results of the research.The data analysis of the study is carried out by adopting SPSS 18.0,including exploratory factor analysis,descriptive analysis,and One-Way ANOVA.The exploratory factor analysis was conducted to measure what kind of motivational regulation strategies that junior high school students use in their English learning.The descriptive analysis was conducted to measure the junior high school students' usage of motivational regulation strategies in their English learning.The difference of grade that junior high school students use in their English learning used One-Way ANOVA.According to the results,it was found that: Firstly,Junior high school students use eleven English motivational regulation strategies,they are: meta-cognition,self-efficacy,volition,interest enhancement,mastery self-talk,attention,self-reward,attribution,extrinsic reward,cross-cultural communication.Secondly,Junior high school students use these eleven English motivational regulation strategies in a relatively high standard.However,these strategies are used with different frequencies.The orders of using English motivational regulation strategies are: performance self-talk,meta-cognition control,self-efficacy,volition,interest enhancement,mastery self-talk,attention,self-reward,attribution,extrinsic reward,cross-cultural communication.Junior high school students often use five English motivational regulation strategies in their English learning,performance self-talk,meta-cognition control,self-efficacy,volition,interest enhancement.And mastery self-talk,attention,self-reward,attribution,extrinsic reward,cross cultural communication are used in relatively low frequency.Thirdly,grade is a factor that affects junior high school students' usage of English motivational regulation strategies.There is significant difference on the use of English motivational regulation strategies.But there is no significant difference on the use of English motivational regulation strategies regarding to extrinsic reward.Besides,different English motivational regulation strategies have different frequencies on the use of these strategies.It is obvious that the students from the Grade 8 use meta-cognition control,interest enhancement,mastery self-talk,self-efficacy,attention strategies more frequently than the students from the Grade 9 and Grade 7,and there is no obvious difference between students from Grade 8 and Grade 9 on the use of these English motivational regulation strategies.It is clearly that the students from Grade 9 use self-reward,cross-cultural communication,attribution,volition and performance self-talk more frequently than the students from the Grade 8 and Grade 7 on the use of these English motivational regulation strategies.However,there is no significant difference between Grade 8 and Grade 9 on the use of these strategies.There is no significant difference on the use of extrinsic reward strategy.According to the results obtained in this research,in order to increase students' English learning motivation,it is suggested that: firstly,English teachers should give students some education and training about English motivational regulation strategies.And then,English teachers need to pay more attention to the individual characteristics in the process of motivational regulation strategies training.At last,Junior high school students should follow their English teachers' tips and use these motivational regulation strategies consciously and frequently in the process of English learning.