A Study On High School Freshmen’s Self-regulatory Capacity In English Vocabulary Learning

The strategic learning has transferred from focusing on the product-the actual strategies employed-to the self-regulatory process itself and the specific learner capacity underlying it. Now the study of self-regulation has come of age, causing a virtual explosion of work in this area.McDonough (2001) firstly put forward that language learning strategy (LLS) may belong to an upper term, self-regulation, which led to the attempts by many language researchers to apply the concept of self-regulation in educational psychology to the field of foreign/second language learning, and thus the directions of LLS gradually have shifted to self-regulation in foreign/second language learning. Tseng, Dornyei and Schmitt (2006) took the first step to generate a psychometrically-based scale to measure the self-regulation in vocabulary learning, named self-regulatory capacity in vocabulary learning (SRCvoc) scale. Subsequently, numerous studies on self-regulation in foreign/second language learning have been carried out at home and abroad. Some language researchers held that the same problems as LLS’s still exist, and reconceptualizing strategic learning with self-regulation replacing LLS was similar to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. However, most language researchers supported that what successful language learners do is not to have language learning strategies but put creative effort into improving their language learning, and self-regulation plays a critical role in that process.Based on the previous studies, this thesis is to investigate the situation of the SRCvoc and explore the SRCvoc difference between high and low achievers targeting at high school freshmen of Liquan No.l Middle School, using Tseng et al.(2006) SRCvoc scale.120scales were distributed,110scales being valid. The following data analysis was conducted in three phases:1) to test the reliability of the SRCvoc scale,2) to analyze the situation of the SRCvoc and3) to explore the SRCvoc difference between high and low achievers. All data were analyzed by SPSS19.0. The findings of this study are as follows:1. High school freshmen’s SRCvoc have reached the medium level with satiation and emotion control still needing further improvement. 2. High achievers have better SRCvoc than low achievers, but with no significant difference in dimensions of both metacognitive and emotion control.Finally, according to the results of this study, some specific suggestions are given to English teachers and students so that they can deal with the relationship bewteen English vocabulary teaching and learning. And directions for research on self-regulation are pointed out, hoping to further the study of self-regulation capacity in foreign/second language learning.