Examining EFL Undergraduates’ Self-Regulated Motivation in English: A Survey Study

Abstract

Self-regulated learning is an active, conscious and reflective learning style which emphasizes that learners should monitor, evaluate and adjust their own learning process to achieve the best learning results. Good self-regulated motivation can help learners overcome difficulties in English learning and improve the effectiveness of English learning. The purpose of this study is to explore the self-regulated motivation of EFL undergraduates. This paper investigates the self-regulated motivation of EFL undergraduates in three universities in Guangxi to explore the current status of their self-regulated motivation and the demographic factors affecting their self-regulated motivation. This study adopts the form of a questionnaire to investigate the target group and draws conclusions by analyzing and summarizing the survey results using SPSS. The results of the survey showed that the self-regulated motivation of the participants was generally not high. Most of them were at a moderate level. Among them, participants’ participation and regulation of the learning environment, regulation of affect, regulation of the classroom environment, and task value activation were all at moderate levels. In addition, the survey results showed that gender and academic year did not have a significant impact on participants’ motivation levels. This study investigates the current situation of self-regulated motivation of EFL undergraduates, which has certain reference value for improving the learning motivation and learning ability of EFL undergraduates. These problems can be further explored in future studies to promote the cultivation of self-regulated learning ability of EFL undergraduates.