Investigating the relationship between foreign language learners' use of self-regulation strategies and their level of motivation

The aim of our study is to find out the level of motivation and self-regulation strategies of students who learn English or Turkish as a foreign language. The relationship between these two variables and their impact on the academic achievement were also examined in the study, which was conducted with two separate groups consisting of students who learn English and those who learn Turkish. Whether there are any differences between genders in each group regarding their level of motivation and self-regulation strategies and a comparison between the two groups of students in terms of these variables are also within the scope of our study. The participants of our research, which is both descriptive and relational type, are two groups of students, the first of which consists of 263 students who are learning English at a state university in the western part of Turkey, and the second of which consists of 99 students who are learning Turkish in Turkey or the United States of America. In order to determine their level of motivation and use of self-regulatory strategies, students were asked to fill in, either in Turkish or English, the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire, which was developed by Pintrich, Smith, Garcia and McKeachie (1991) and adapted to Turkish by Buyukozturk, Akgun, Ozkahveci and Demirel (2004). The first page of the questionnaire includes some demographic information such as the students' age, gender and GPA. The data collected from the questionnaire was analysed by using the IBM SPSS Statistics. As a result of the data analysis, the motivational level of the first-group students learning English was found to be high (X̄ =151,10, S=20,62) whereas the students showed a moderate level of self-regulatory strategy use (X̄ =213,60, S=38,47). The study revealed a positive and significant relationship between the level of students' motivation and their self-regulatory strategy use. No significant difference was observed between male and female students of this first group in terms of motivational level. However, it was observed that the mean of self-regulatory strategy use of female students was significantly higher than those of male students. As to the factors affecting the academic achievement, it was discovered that motivation was the positive and significant predictor of the academic achievement, while self-regulatory strategy use was not detected to be a significant predictor of the academic achievement. Lastly, it was found that the age was a negative and significant predictor of the academic achievement. In other words, the study revealed that as the students in the first group got older, their academic achievement level decreased. According to the data received from the second group consisting of foreign students learning Turkish, both the main of the students' motivation (X̄ =167,75, S=18,01) and the mean of their self-regulatory strategy use (X̄ =241,71, S=31,41) are high. Similar to the first group, it was discovered that there was a positive and significant relationship between the level of these Turkish-learning students' motivation and their self-regulatory strategy use. No significant difference was observed between male and female students regarding their motivational level and self-regulatory strategy use. When the academic achievement scores of these students were analysed, motivation was found to be the positive and significant predictor of the academic achievement whereas self-regulatory strategy use was not detected to be a significant predictor of the academic achievement. Finally, just as in the first group, it was observed that the age was a negative and significant predictor of the academic achievement. Keywords: Motivation, self-regulation, self-regulatory learning strategies, academic achievement, foreign language education