Abstract:

Scientists have recently paid a great deal of attention to the ability of students to self-regulate their learning as they must be able to continue learning throughout their lives. Nowadays it is regarded important to acquire knowledge and skills individually. Some earlier meta-analyses of self-regulating strategies have tried to summarize the findings of different studies in this field. But little knowledge is presently available. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the effectiveness of self-regulating strategies aimed at enhancing students’ performance in learning the English language. The authors of this article have developed a 52-hour course of “Academic Writing in English” using self-regulating strategies. The course was offered to 49 (among them males 20, females 29) fourth-year students of National Research University “Higher School of Economics”, Public Administration Studies. The students were divided into 2 groups, experimental and control. The experimental group followed the designed course aimed at self-regulated strategies development. The second group continued their studies in the traditional way. The experimental group showed high performance results in academic writing while the control group participants demonstrated a smaller qualitative increase in the competences developed. The interpretation of these results can be used for future research of self-regulating strategies, specifically the important sub-component of these strategies, critical thinking.

Keywords:

Self-regulated learning, meta-analyses, self-regulated strategies.