Self-regulation and self-efficacy for the improvement of listening proficiency outside the classroom

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on a qualitative inquiry into Japanese students’ self-regulated learning processes to improve their listening proficiency outside the classroom in an English as a foreign language context. Four Japanese university students with different levels of self-efficacy and listening outcomes were closely examined from a social cognitive perspective. The analysis of the data gathered from learning diaries, interviews and other self-reports showed that (1) the students with high self-efficacy were specific, diverse and frequent in their self-regulated processes, while their peers with low self-efficacy were not active in these processes and (2) in particular, a self-efficacious student who made greater listening progress exhibited sophisticated metacognitive strategy use in his entire self-regulated learning process, which was likely to promote effective self-regulatory cycles. These results shed light on the potential interactions between self-regulation, self-efficacy and language gains in the self-instructional learning setting. The implications of these findings for language teachers and learners are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-regulated learning
• self-efficacy
• listening strategies
• qualitative methods

Acknowledgements

The author would like to express her sincere gratitude to the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their constructive feedback on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.