Abstract:

Asian students in general are used to having their teacher as their learning director and merely respond to the teacher’s directions. Guided, didactic teacher-centered approach is generally an accepted practice of teaching and learning among students from South East and East Asia. Students seem to expect teachers to provide complete notes for the class, and have tutorials to help them answer questions. The students place no expectations on themselves to participate in the learning process. The culture and tradition of the people too has not encouraged independence and autonomy among students. As such students are overly teacher dependent and have to be spoon fed with information. The fact that the Malaysian education system is exam oriented does not provide much room for learner autonomy either. However the quality of the student‘s self-regulated learning skills has a great influence on the student‘s degree performance. The Ministry of Education, Malaysia has also stressed the importance of gaining self-regulated learning skills. This case study is looking at the development of self-regulated learning skills among Malaysian students enrolled in the foundation programmes of a foreign branch university in Malaysia. The objective of the study is to establish the level of self-regulated study skills among Malaysian students after completion of secondary school and identifying specific areas of study skills that the students need help with. Data was collected using the diagnostic tool, Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI). The ten scales in LASSI are related to three components of strategic learning skill, will and self-regulation. Results showed that students got a mean percentile of below 50 for all the components tested with the lowest being in motivation. The results showed that the students do indeed need help with gaining self-regulated learning skills and the information gathered can be used as a prescriptive measure by the university to help students enrolling in its foundation programme.

Keywords:

Self-regulated learning, Study skills, Malaysian students.