Investigation Into Students' Use Of Motivational Regulation Strategies And Its Relations With Their Learner Autonomy And English Achievement In Senior School

Motivation is an important emotional factor affecting foreign language learning.It has been proved related with learners' learner autonomy and academic achievement.However,motivation is dynamic and changeable in nature.In the sustained deep English learning process,learners often suffer from the decrease of or even lack of motivation on account of some interference factors.Under such a situation,they must adopt certain strategies to regulate their motivation so as to persist in language learning.Motivational regulation strategies and learner autonomy are two important aspects in the research field of foreign language teaching,while there are just a few empirical studies on learners' self-regulation of motivation in this field so far;and the study of the relations between these two terms remains a new topic.Therefore,the present study aims to explore senior high school students' use of motivational regulation strategies in English learning process and its relations with their learner autonomy as well as English achievement.In order to serve these purposes,four research questions are to be answered:1)What's the general pattern of senior high school students' use of motivational regulation strategies?2)Is there any difference of using motivational regulation strategies among high and low English achievers?3)What is the relationship between senior high school students' use of motivational regulation strategies and learner autonomy?4)What is the relationship between senior high school students' use of motivational regulation strategies and their English achievement?Subjects of the present study were 157 senior two students from a middle school in Fengcheng City.Besides,three instruments including the questionnaires,semi-structured interview and English mid-term exam were adopted.All these 157 subjects have first taken part in questionnaire survey,and later 8 of them were selected as the interviewees.Based on the results of descriptive statistical analysis,independent-samples t test,Pearson correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis,the major findings of the present study could be summarized as follows:1)The usage frequency of all these eight motivational regulation strategy amongsenior high school students reached a medium or a relatively high level.To be specific,senior high school students adopted Task value enhancement,Performance self-talk and Negative-based incentive in a relatively high frequency,while they used Self-reward in a lowest frequency.2)There's no significant difference in the overall strategy use between high and low English achievers,except for Interest enhancement and Negative-based incentive.In contrast,high English achievers tended to use the strategy of Interest enhancement,while low English achievers tended to adopt the Negative-based incentive strategy more frequently.3)Seven of eight motivational regulation strategies were significantly positively correlated with senior high school students' learner autonomy,with the exception of Negative-based incentive.Besides,Interest enhancement,Self-efficacy enhancement,Mastery self-talk and Performance self-talk could significantly predict learner autonomy.Among them,the predictive power of Interest enhancement towards learner autonomy was the strongest.4)Among these eight motivational regulation strategies,seven strategies were positively correlated with English achievement with the exception of Negative-based incentive,indicating that students who actively use various strategies to regulate their English learning motivation are more likely to achieve high scores in English learning.In addition,the results of regression analysis revealed that Interest enhancement and Negative-based incentive could predict students' English achievement,with the later being a more significant predictor.Based on the above findings,the author puts forward some suggestions for senior English teaching: 1)In order to improve the frequency of using motivation regulation strategies among senior high school students in English learning,teachers should first equip students with relevant knowledge of motivation regulation strategies.2)Teachers should make students realize the importance of motivational regulation in English learning,and help them establish awareness of motivation regulation.3)To help students further improve their autonomy and English achievement,teachers can provide motivational regulation strategies training for them.4)Teachers should figure out the motivation problems that students frequently encounter,and then guide them to adopt corresponding regulation strategies so as to help them better self-regulate their motivation.