The relationship between Iranian EFL learners’ self-regulatory vocabulary strategy use and theirvocabulary size

Self-regulation is referred to as learners’ self-generated ideas and actions which are systematicallydirected towards achieving educational goals and require learners’ active participation in the learningprocess (Zimmerman & Bandura, 1994). The present study investigated the relationship betweenIranian EFL students’ self-regulation capacity for vocabulary learning and their vocabulary size. For thispurpose, the researchers made use of two main instruments: the self-regulation capacity in vocabularylearning scale developed by Tseng et al. (2006) consisting of five subscales of commitment,metacognitive, emotion, satiation and environment control, and a bilingual vocabulary size testdeveloped and validated by Karami (2012). The results of the data analysis revealed no significantrelationship between the two variables measured by these instruments. However, the results of themultiple regressions indicated that the metacognitive control compared to the other subscales made abetter contribution to the prediction of learners’ vocabulary size. In addition, based on the analysis ofvariance (ANOVA), which examined and compared the self-regulatory strategy use of learners indifferent experience groups, the first year students had a higher mean score in their self-regulationcapacity, which can possibly be attributed to the strategies they have learnt in their Study Skills courses.Finally, it was suggested that teachers must try to develop self-regulatory power in the learners becausetheir creative effort and informed decisions in trying to improve their own learning are highly important.

کلیدواژه ها:

self-regulation capacity ، strategy use ، vocabulary size ، learning experience groups