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.