A Correlational Study Of Junior High School Students' Motivation Regulation Strategies And Their English Language Achievement

A series of methods and behaviors used by learners to maintain or improve their motivation are called motivation regulation strategies,which stem from self-regulated learning theory.It is a process in which learners are actively involved in cognition,motivation,and behavior.It depends on the degree to which the learner actively controls cognition,motivation,and behavior in the learning process.Among the many dimensions of self-regulated learning,motivation is one of the most active and unstable dimensions.The ability of learners to control motivation is regarded as an important aspect of self-regulated learning,and will ultimately affect their learning outcomes.Foreign language learning is a long and arduous process.It needs regulation strategies to keep the motivation of study for a long time.However,there is a lack of systematic empirical research on motivation regulation strategies in the field of foreign language learning.The existing researches are mostly related to the research on the strategies of university students' motivation regulation.There are few studies on the correlation between motivation regulation strategies and English achievement in junior high school students of rural area.Because of the different self-regulation abilities of the learners in different age groups,the degree of motivation regulation and the means will be different.This study attempts to understand the overall use of motivation regulation strategies in junior high school students.The author tries to explore how the junior high school students generally adopt motivation regulation strategies and how the motivation regulation strategies influence their learning outcomes in the process of foreign language learning.The study aims to solve the following problems:1)What is the overall picture of junior high school students' using motivation regulation strategies?2)How are the motivation regulation strategies correlated with the English achievement of junior high school students?3)What are the differences in the performance of the junior high school students with high or low frequency of motivation regulation strategies?This research mainly adopts the method of questionnaire.A total of 125 students from Grade 9 in Da Langdian Middle School of Nan Pi County Changzhou City participated in the survey.The author used SPSS software to analyze the data collected from the questionnaires,including descriptive statistics,Pearson correlations and one-way ANOVA analysis.The results show that junior high school students use a variety of motivation strategies to regulate their learning motivation,and the frequency of the eight strategies is above average.However,when there is a problem of motivation,high level learners are inclined to use more motivation strategies to solve their motivation problems,while lower level learners adopt less motivation strategies.In the process of foreign language learning,the higher the level of students' foreign language is,the higher the frequency of students' using motivation regulation strategies is.The results also show that there is a strong correlation between students' motivation regulation strategies and learning outcomes.English teachers and researchers have done a lot of research on the motivation regulation strategies in English teaching,but most of them focus on the English teaching and learning in colleges and high schools.There are few studies concerning the junior high school students.The innovation of this study is to explore the correlation between junior high school students' motivation regulation strategy and English learning achievement,and to provide adequate theoretical basis for teaching and learning through experimental inquiry.The research results show that foreign language teachers and students should pay attention to the regulation of motivation.Foreign language teachers should not only make great efforts to stimulate students' learning motivation,but also help students learn how to regulate their learning motivation and how to maintain efficient learning.Although the study has limitations,the results are of both theoretical and practical significance?...