ONLINE SELF-REGULATED LEARNING STRATEGIES AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT OF LEARNERS OF ENGLISH AS FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN DISTANCE EDUCATION IN A HIGH SCHOOL IN TURKEY

Abstract

Self-regulated learning (SRL) has been identified as a crucial premise of academic achievement and effectual learning for students. A self-regulated learner can select, organize, and manage their learning with independent and effective use of suitable strategies and also mediate and observe their own learning process. Due to that duty and responsibility that the students take during their learning progress, they may need to exhibit these strategies in distance learning environment which prioritize students more to regulate their own learning in order to achieve success compared to traditional classes. The main purpose of this study is to know the extent of online self-regulated learning(OSRL) strategy use of learners of EFL across the different academic achievement levels. Additionally, the roles of gender and course attendance in online self-regulatory strategy use were investigated. The participants of the study are 184 students of a public high school in Turkey receiving online education during Covid 19 pandemic. The instruments to gather the data are the OSRL questionnaire and a followup semi-structured interview. The collected data were analyzed through SPSS in terms of numbers (n), frequencies, percentages (%), means (X̄), medians, standard deviations (Sd.), Shapiro-Wilk Test, Mann Whitney U-Test, and Kruskal Wallis H-Test. The findings revealed relatively less usage of two sub-skills of OSRL, which are helpseeking and self-evaluation, compared to the other skills. For all ORSL strategies scores, the groups of students with different academic achievement level (unsuccessful, mid-level and successful) were compared with each other. As a result, it was found that there was a statistically significant difference between academic achievement level groups only in terms of help seeking strategy use scores. Finally, it was found that vii course attendance did not contribute to the use of help-seeking strategies only and also, in terms of all OSLR scores, there was no statistically significant difference between the female and male groups. Furthermore, the interview findings uncovered the underlying reasons of questionnaire findings in depth.