A Study Of Senior High School Students' Self-regulation In English Vocabulary Learning

Self-regulation,which is broader than learning strategies,not only puts emphasis upon cognitive strategy use,but also gives great concern on meta-cognitive strategy use and motivational beliefs.It begins to draw on more and more attention since the1990 s.Self-regulated learners refer to learners who act as active participants in the learning process,directing to achieve challenging goals they set with independent and autonomous ideas and actions.Such learners are the target of the New Curriculum Standard,which attaches great importance to encourage students to become more involved,active and responsible for their own learning.And because English vocabulary,as a foundation for the efficient learning of listening,reading,writing and speaking,plays a significant role in language learning,it is important to understand and promote senior high school students' self-regulation in vocabulary learning.Although considerable studies have investigated self-regulation in general education and other fields,few of them pay attention to self-regulation in EFL learning,especially to EFL vocabulary learning.To fill such gap,the study attempts to investigate senior high school students' self-regulation in vocabulary learning,which will probe into four issues: 1)What are the characteristics of senior high school students' self-regulation in vocabulary learning? 2)Are there any differences of students' self-regulation in vocabulary learning between male and female students? 3)Are there any differences of students' self-regulation in vocabulary learning between high and low achievers in English proficiency? 4)Is there any relation between students' self-regulation in vocabulary learning and vocabulary size?The participants of this research were 192 senior high school students from one key senior high school in Nanchang,with 104 male students and 88 female students.The instruments were a questionnaire based on Pintrich et al.'s Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire(MSLQ)and Tseng et al.'s Self-regulating Capacity in Vocabulary Learning Scale(SRCvoc),a vocabulary level test,an English proficiency test and a semi-structured interview.The SPSS 17.0 was employed for the analysis of the data,which included descriptive analysis,independent sample t-test and Pearson correlation analysis.Furthermore,the semi-interview was applied as a supplementary research instrument with the purpose to have a further analysis and understandingabout students' opinions on self-regulation in vocabulary learning.The major findings of the study are as follows:1)Senior high school students in this key senior high school have an overall medium degree of self-regulation in vocabulary learning.Among the six components of self-regulation in vocabulary learning,task-value ranks the highest and self-efficacy is the lowest.2)There is a significant difference in students' overall self-regulation in vocabulary learning between male students and female students.Time and environment control difference between male and female students is the largest and self-efficacy difference is the smallest between male students and female students among the components of self-regulation in vocabulary learning.3)There exists significant difference between high and low achievers in their overall self-regulation in vocabulary learning.Satiation control difference is the largest among components of self-regulation,while there is no significant difference in commitment control.4)There is a significant and positive relation between students' self-regulation in vocabulary learning and vocabulary size.Among six components of self-regulation,satiation control has the highest relation with vocabulary size,while commitment control has the lowest relation with vocabulary size.According to the findings,some pedagogical advices on enhancing senior high school students' self-regulation in vocabulary learning are given,followed by limitations of the study.