ARE METACOGNITIVE LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGIES AND LANGUAGE LEARNING MOTIVATION RELATED?

In Asian EFL Journal, Manfred (2007) found out that the use of metacognitive strategies increased students’ language learning motivation. In the study, firstly, the metacognitve strategies were examined because they are thought to be more useful among the other strategies since they can be applied to other learning activities (Chamot, O’Mailey, 1987 cited in Manfred, 2007). Oxford (1990) claims that metacognitive strategy use enables learners to center, arrange, plan and evaluate language learning. In Manfred’s study, the subjects were given a nine-item questionnaire to measure the use of metacognitve language learning strategy. In Oxford’s classification there were three groups and these nine items were designed to measure them. One item was for ‘centering your learning’, six items were for ‘arranging and planning your learning’, and two items were for ‘evaluating your learning’. The students were asked to give a point to the questions from 1 to 5. 1 point meant that ‘never or almost never true of me’ and 5 points meant that ‘always or almost always true for me’. By applying this questionnaire, whether the students used metacognitive language learning strategies and what kind of metacognitive strategy they used most was revealed. The results indicated that the students used metacognitive strategies moderately. ‘Centering your learning’ was the most popular and ‘arranging and planning your learning’ was the least popular. Another questionnaire was given to the students to measure their language learning motivation. This time the questionnaire was composed of eight items. Four of the questions measured the integrative motivation and four of the questions measuring instrumental motivation of the learners. The level of students’ motivation in that study was moderate. The subjects were more instrumental in their motivation. Lastly, a correlation between the use of metacognitive language learning strategies and language learning motivation was investigated. It was found out that they were positively related.
The present study will be a close replication of Manfred’s (2007) study. There will be 30 subjects in the study. The subjects will be English prep school students at Anadolu University in Turkey and their age will range from 18 to 22. The same two questionnaires will be used to measure the use of metacognitive strategies and level of motivation of the students and the data will as well be analyzed to see if there will be any correlation between them.

References:
Manfred, W., M. (2007). The relationships between the metacognitive language learning strategies, language learning motivation among the Chinese-speaking EFL learners at a vocational education institute in Hong Kong. Asian EFL Journal. 9 p. 93-115
Oxford, R. (1990). Language Learning Strategies: What every teacher should know. Rowley. M.A.: Newbury House