A Research On Foreign Language Learners' Motivation And Learning Strategies In MOOCs

The development of the Internet and related technologies has made learning resources more diversified,and its influence on teaching methods and concepts is increasing.Some online courses such as massive open online courses came into being.There are many MOOC platforms in China that have been established.The research on the learners of MOOCs(Massive Open Online Courses)has increased year by year,but there are not many studies on the motivation and strategies of foreign language learners on the MOOCs,and the analysis of the relationship between these two is rare.The purpose of this study is to explore the motivations and learning strategies of foreign language learmers on the MOOC platform,and to further explore the relationship between them.The research methods in this paper use questionnaires and interviews to collect data.The questionnaire is based on the Motivated Strategies for Learming Questionnaire(MSLQ)developed by Pintrich et al.,(1991&1993).In order to further explain the questionnaire data,the interview outline is also based on the structure and content of the questionnaire survey.The participants are foreign language learmers on the Chinese University MOOC platform.There are three research questions in this thesis:(1)What are the levels of motivation and use of learning strategies for foreign language learners on the Chinese University MOOC platform?(2)What is the relationship between foreign language learners' motivation and their learning strategies?(3)Why are there some correlations between specific motivational variables and learning strategy variables?After collecting 33 valid questionnaires and interviewing 7 learmers who have studied certain courses online at Chinese MOOC platform,it is found that the motivation construct has three variables through factor analysis:self-efficacy and intrinsic goal orientation,control of learning beliefs,and extrinsic goal orientation.The construct of learning strategies have five variables:elaboration,help-seeking and peer learning,self?regulation,directed and selective attention,and planning strategies.The descriptive statistics show that the motivation and strategy level of foreign language learmers are moderately high.Through the canonical correlation analysis,it was found that the two variable set of motivation and learning strategy have reached a significant level at.000.The correlation coefficient of the first pair of canonical factors is.855,showing a correlation between motivational variables and learning strategy variables.In order to further understand the specific influence of motivation on learning strategies,multiple linear regression analyses are run and show that extrinsic goal orientation has certain influence on elaboration strategy,peer learning and attention control,especially peer learning.Self-efficacy and intrinsic goal orientation are closely related to self-regulation strategy and planning strategy.Through interviews,the causal link between motivation and learming strategies is further eonfirmed,and the intrinsie goal orientation has the greatest impact on self-regulation.Extrinsic goal orientation has the greatest impact on peer learming.This study discusses these two pairs of closely related variables,explaining the reasons for their correlations from the perspective of learner's learning behavior and their attitudes toward the platform.After analyzing the reasons why the motivation and learming strategies are related to each other,the eorresponding suggestions are given,hoping to improve the learning efficiency of the learners in MOOC learning.The study further explores the foreign language learmers' evaluations of the Chinese MOOC platform.The learmers agree to introduce the MOOCs into campus and practice the flipped classroom,which indicates the direction for future study.