An Investigation Into Senior High School Student's Use Of Self-Regulated Learning Strategies

In the field of second language acquisition,more and more researches are being conducted on self-regulated learning(SRL).However,very few people are concerned about the use of self-regulated learning strategies.Self-regulated learning strategies refer to learners' approaches to control their thoughts and behaviors in the process of understanding learning tasks,selecting learning methods and executing learning tasks.(Schunk & Zimmerman,2011)Based on the social cognitive theory,the main purpose of this paper is to empirically study the self-regulated learning strategies used by individual learners in high school.In addition,this paper explores the relationship between the use of self-regulated learning strategies and learners' English achievement.It also aims to study the differences in the use of self-regulated learning strategies between high achievers and low achievers,and the impact of students' using self-regulated learning strategies on learners' English achievement.Therefore,this paper has the following four research questions:(1)What is the general situation of the use of self-regulated learning strategies among senior high school students?(2)Is there any relationship between the students' use of self-regulated learning strategies and their language achievement?(3)Are there any differences in the use of self-regulated learning strategies between high achievers and low achievers? If there are,what are they?(4)Can the use of self-regulated learning strategies predict achievement in English learning?A total of 207 students in grade three from four natural classes in Nankang NO.3 senior high school in Jiangxi province participated in this study.The Data were collected from two sources: a five-point Likert-type self-regulated learning strategies questionnaire,which was adapted from Meral Seker's models used in2016's studies to examine the use of self-regulated learning strategies.The author adjusted the questionnaire and conducted a reliability and validity analysis.The second data source was from students' English scores.SPSS17.0 was employed to analyze the data.In addition,the author interview four teachers and eightstudents to supplement the questionnaire results.The time of each respondent was approximately 15 minutes,which was recorded and transcribed verbatim.The main findings were as follows:(1)Senior high students employed the use of self-regulated learning strategies moderately to low level based on mean score.And comparing the mean scores of each component,the result showed that learners used them in similar degree.(2)English achievement had a significant positive correlation with each component.Also,the finding revealed that English achievement had positive correlation with four sub-scales: evaluation strategies,cognitive strategies,metacognitive strategies and external motivation strategies.(3)There was a significant difference between high achievers,low achievers in terms of the use of self-regulated learning strategies.Specifically,the difference existed in the use of evaluation strategies,cognitive strategies and external motivation strategies.(4)Evaluation strategies and external motivation strategies contributed significantly to the predication of learner's English achievement.And the combination of the two variables together predicated 28% of English achievement.However,interviews with teachers indicate that they do not emphasize the importance of using the SRL strategy in English teaching.Compared with high English scores,most students with low English scores do not know how to apply it to English learning.This study shows that the use of self-regulated learning strategies is significantly associated with students' English achievement.Therefore,Both students and teachers should pay attention to self-regulated learning strategies.