L2 Learners' Motivation Beliefs and Writing by Self-regulatory Summarizing

Abstract

This study aimed to explore how explicit summarizing practices combined with self-regulation prompts influence motivation beliefs and writing performance by L2 learners at the beginner level. As a theoretical framework, the relationship among self-regulatory learning, motivational components and language performance was discussed. Regarding six motivational scales measured by using a shortened MSLQ, the results revealed there was significant and positive change in all the motivation scales after involved in the intervention: the highest perception change in both ‘intrinsic goal orientation’ and ‘task value’, followed by ‘control of learning belief’ and ‘self-efficacy for learning and performance’, and the least increase in ‘extrinsic goal orientation’, while negative perception of ‘test anxiety’ was significantly decreased. In terms of syntactic complexity measures as objective indices for language development, the length of production including the ‘mean length of sentence’, ‘T-unit’, and ‘clause’, was most significantly increased, followed by the number of ‘clauses per T-unit’ and ‘complex nominals per clause’ for phrase-level measures. These results indicated that L2 beginner learners' motivation beliefs for learning could positively increase and their writing performance could be improved with more complex syntactic forms of longer sentence, clause and phrase levels, when involved in systematic summarizing practices with self-regulation prompts, teacher guidance and feedback. (Dankook University)