Self-regulation strategies that Eenglish language learners in a Turkish state university use to increase their proficiency and self-efficacy

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2017
Tomak, Burak
With the new trends in language teaching, more responsibility has been given to the language learners who are in charge of their own learning. Thus, they are now supposed to keep track of their language development and do their best to increase their language proficiency and self-efficacy. Especially learners who start their language learning from A1 level and who must reach to B2 level within a limited time just like the ones here in this study are expected to make use of the language learning strategies to increase the efficiency of their language learning and to improve themselves within a limited amount of time. This study aims at determining the self-regulation strategies that students who started their language learning process from A1 level in the School of Foreign Languages in one of the Turkish state universities in Istanbul had used and their effects on the self-efficacy and linguistic proficiency within an academic year that took eight months. For the purpose of this study, the researcher distributed a questionnaire with which the researcher reached 169 students. After the analysis of the questionnaire results with SPPS, the researcher made stratification among the participants and 10 participants were chosen. These participants were taken to think aloud protocols and interviews both almost at the end of the first (fall) semester and nearly at the end of the second (spring) semester. After the semester break, student diaries were also collected. For triangulation purposes, instructors that had taught this group were also included in the study and they were interviewed at the end of the academic year as well. According to the results, the higher average group used strategies in accordance with their own needs and the deficiencies of the language, which led them to change the strategies accordingly in the second term whereas the average group participants used the same strategies as the ones in the first term. Higher average group mostly used “cognitive” strategies whereas the participants in the below average group and the average group preferred “memory” strategies.

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Citation Formats
B. Tomak, “Self-regulation strategies that Eenglish language learners in a Turkish state university use to increase their proficiency and self-efficacy,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2017.