Design and Perception of an Approach to Improving Chinese as a Foreign Language Learners’ Self-Regulated Learning Strategies

Self-regulated learning (SRL) is a social-cognitive construct in the realm of self-regulation that describes the ways in which individuals actively and constructively regulate their own congitive processes in an educational setting. SRL conceptualizes effective learning as a process of cognitive and motivational evaluation where a learner completes academic tasks (Heikkilä & Lonka, 2006; Pintrich, 2000; Zimmerman, 1990; 2008). Different models of SRL developed over the years (Boekaerts & Niemivirta, 2000; Borkowski, 1996; Pintrich, 2000; Winne & Hadwin, 1998; Zimmerman, 2000), but all models assume at least three phases: a preparatory or forethought phase, an actual performance or task completion phase, and an evaluation and adaptation phase. In the preparatory phase, learners engage in task analysis, planning, and goal setting based on their cognitive and metacognitive knowledge about the subject as well as their motivational beliefs about the self, the task and the situation. In the performance phase, learners choose strategies to monitor the process of completing the tasks such as comprehension monitoring, time and resource allocation, and physical environment choice. The last phase, the evaluation phase, consists of evaluating outcomes and reflecting upon learning. All models assume the SRL phases to be cyclical in nature and assume that the evaluation phase influences the subsequent preparatory phase