EFL college junior and senior students' self-regulated motivation for improving English speaking: A survey study

Abstract

Despite majoring in English, many junior and senior college students face limited opportunities to practice their EFL speaking in class. Some self-motivated students, through self-regulated learning, seek beyond-class opportunities to tap into physical and virtual human interaction to hone their spoken English. This study examined junior and senior college students' level of self-regulated motivation to improve their speaking of English as a foreign language (SRMIS-EFL). It looked into the interaction of students' academic level and gender to their SRMIS-EFL. Participants were 300 EFL college junior and senior students from an English Department of a Yemeni university. This study utilized an online self-reported SRMIS-EFL questionnaire to gather data. Its descriptive and inferential statistical analyses revealed that senior students' overall level of SRMIS-ELF was high, while junior students' level was medium. It found that students used a range of motivation self-regulation strategies to improve their EFL speaking competence. It also indicated no significant relationship between students' SRMIS-EFL and their academic level. However, it evinced that students' gender had a small but significant effect, in favor of female students, on their SRMIS-EFL. The study suggests incorporating motivation regulation training into EFL programs to raise awareness of motivational self-regulatory strategies to cultivate student motivation.

EFL Students’ Self-Regulated Learning Strategies during the Covid-19 Pandemic

“…The same finding was also recorded in the study by Boran and Karakus (2022), involving gifted and talented school students whose high metacognitive awareness significantly affected their problem-solving skills directly displayed in many creative solutions. Similarly, a high level of motivation self-regulation strategies among Yemeni college seniors was uncovered by Alotumi (2021). Thus, drawing on the first finding of the present study and those of previous research, it can be inductively concluded that self-regulated learning strategies are essentially and beneficially grown with learners' educational advancements over the years across cultures, disciplines, and learning contexts.…”

“…This symmetric relation between the two components (intellectual operations) is also reported in past research. For instance, the levels of affect regulation and classroom environment regulation to enhance English speaking performances were both high (Alotumi, 2021;Uztosun, 2020). When self-regulated learning strategies increased, there was a positively corresponding increase in reading comrehension skills (Amini et al, 2020;Yaghi (2021), in listening comprehensions skills (Nosratinia et al, 2015;Yang, 2020), and in writing skills as well (Sun & Wang, 2020;Teng & Zhang, 2020).…”

“…Recently, Yaghi (2021), investigating the impact of metacognitive online reading strategies on online reading dispositions among 301 Saudi students, remarked that support strategies (such as translating, using dictionaries, or highlighting) were most deployed to facilitate students' reading comprehension. Meanwhile, 300 juniors and seniors from a college in Yemen took part in a questionnaire survey Arab World English Journal www.awej.org ISSN: 2229-9327 25 by Alotumi (2021). They reflected that they utilized various motivation self-regulation strategies to improve their EFL speaking competence.…”

Problems Encountered by Indonesian EFL Learners in Mastering Speaking Skills

“…Non-linguistic aspect becomes an additional factor the Indonesian students run into to develop their speaking skill. Those problems can be caused by several factors, problems that may arise can be in the form of a sense of excessive anxiety (Alotumi, 2021;Sholikhi, 2021) caused by poorly preparation. Feeling of fear of making mistakes can also cause problems for students in conducting verbal communication activities using English.…”

English for Business Purposes in the Context of Printing Institute Students

“…In order to attain academic goals, many students study English (Business English) classes to enhance their business communication skills (Pandeeswari, Hariharasudan & Nawaz, 2021). The highest academic achievers are effective communicators in Business English because academic success is heavily dependent on business communication ability (Alotumi, 2021;Rahiman et al, 2020). As a result, students have a wide range of expectations for how they will be taught English.…”