The Interplay between Self-Regulation and Digital Education Tools in EFL Learning

The Interplay between Self-Regulation and Digital Education Tools in EFL Learning

Dr. Nalan Şan

Ümraniye, İstanbul, Turkey

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2025.90300373

Received: 13 March 2025; Accepted: 21 March 2025; Published: 22 April 2025

LEARNING HOW TO LEARN

Learning to how learn is a fundamental concept which “encompasses a wide variety of activities designed to develop metacognitive awareness and learning strategies” (Girard, Ellis & Brewster, 2002, p. 53). Students are encouraged to concentrate on how they learn in addition to what they learn. Learning to how learn mostly involves the actual process of learning. The EU also recognizes learning to learn as also one of the ten key competencies for lifelong learning in the 2018 strategies (European Communities, 2018, p. 34).  According to Crick, Stringher and Ren (2014), learning how to learn is an essential skill for human flourishing in twenty-first century circumstances of uncertainty and risk as well as an emergent competence as a foundation for lifelong learning and a focus for school improvement.

SELF-REGULATION AND METACOGNITIVE KNOWLEDGE

Learning how to learn is a notion that can closely be associated with self-regulation and metacognitive knowledge. O’Malley and Chamot (1990) define metacognitive knowledge as the knowledge of one’s own cognitive processes related to learning and the cognitive processes of others. Metacognitive knowledge is crucial in developing learners’ sense of self-regulation for listening, speaking, writing and reading skills in foreign language learning because self-regulated use of learning strategies stipulates metacognitive knowledge of one’s own learning process. That is to say, metacognitive knowledge is a prerequisite for self-regulated use of learning strategies. As a result, as Schunk and Zimmerman (1994) contend, self-regulated students stand out among their classmates thanks to the goals they set for themselves, the efficiency of their behavioral self-monitoring and the resourcefulness of their own strategic thinking. In addition, they have a sense of ultimate responsibility for their own learning process as they do not usually feel like becoming victims of their own learning experiences. Learners who self-regulate “set goals for their learning and then attempt to monitor, regulate, and control their cognition, motivation, and behavior, guided and constrained by their goals and the contextual features of the environment” (Pintrich, 2000, p. 453). In other words, they try to manage all aspects of motivation.

Metacognition is involves thinking about one’s own thinking or the human capability to be conscious of one’s mental processes (Flavell, 1979; Metcalfe & Shimamura, 1994; Nelson, 1996). Encouraging learners to be more conscious of their own learning process; hence increasing their metacognitive awareness, can have significant implications for their self-regulated learning in general and their self-regulated use of learning strategies in particular because, as Butler, Schnellert and Perry (2017) as well as Cleary (2018) emphasize, self-regulated learners demonstrate high quality strategic action which corresponds to students’ purposeful, intentional use of procedures and tactics to learn as well as broad metacognitive knowledge and skills leading to increased self-awareness and knowledge of learning activities along with students’ attempts to plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning process. When EFL students get engaged in planning, monitoring and evaluating their own learning processes, language teachers can finally stop assuming the role of the police force or the sole source of the authority and knowledge in the classroom most of the time and allow our learners to become active language users rather than passive language learners. As a matter of fact, this is the ultimate level of success that I personally, both as a researcher and a practitioner in English language teaching field, really desire and encourage my students to struggle towards not only by the end of their prep year at university but also throughout their entire lives.

In addition to the above-mentioned issues, Wenden (1998) also claims that metacognitive knowledge is a requirement for learners to reach a thorough understanding of a particular task and it is this newly acquired task knowledge, which leads to the facilitation of their planning and monitoring for their own learning. Moreover, according to Chamot and Küpper (1989) the strategy identification studies have also revealed that effective second and foreign language learners use various different metacognitive, cognitive, and social-affective strategies for both receptive and productive tasks.

SELF-REGULATORY PROCESSES IN LANGUAGE LEARNING

The concept of self-regulation actually has Vygotskian foundations which regard self-regulation as a result of both social and individual processes (as cited in Kinnucan & Kuebli, 2013).  In Vygotskian self-regulatory development, fundamental self-regulatory processes include such higher order mental processes as problem solving tools, strategies and practices according to Kinnucan and Kuebli (2013). Humans’ thoughts and actions are guided and controlled by these higher order processes. Consequently, self-regulated action and adaptation result from the operation of higher mental functioning. In Vygotsky’s theory (as cited in Kinnucan & Kuebli, 2013, p. 233), internalization is the main process that in fact leads to higher mental functioning or regulatory skills and the process of internalization is not only a developmental consequence but also the main mechanism through which interpersonal activity i.e. dialogue, shared practices and strategies is turned into internal, self-regulating thought processes.

A three-phase was suggested by Zimmerman (1994) so as to describe the self-regulation processes during learning. In the first phase of this cycle, learners, as effective self-regulators, are involved in forethought, or planning. In the second phase of the cycle, learners exert willing control over their own performance, throughout which self-regulated learners use various different strategies in order to manage their own learning process as well as the environmental conditions around them. This performance stage requires learners to employ strategies to direct their attention, expand encoding, and finally fulfill the task. They also keep track of their own performance and evaluate their progress toward their aims while modifying their performance when necessary.  In the third and last self-reflection phase of Zimmerman’s cycle (1994) self-regulated students assess and reflect on their overall performance with an incentive to make further improvements in the future.

Transmission model of developing self-regulation is also worth mentioning here in my opinion because as Paris and Paris (2001) suggest, a metaphor of acquisition applies when guiding research in the area of self-regulated learning.  In other words, students acquire new strategies and skills and apply them in school as teachers can teach these learning strategies directly to their learners, model the good uses of strategies, and advise learners as to when and why these strategies can be beneficial to them. This modeling behavior also complies with Bandura’s (1982) positions of self-efficacy and the observational learning processes that he suggested. Nevertheless, transfer of these learning strategies to novel situations can be really challenging for most students. That is to say, learners may not value or use a certain learning strategy especially if the learning conditions change.   Thus, instead of an acquisition metaphor of self-regulation, a developmental metaphor can be adopted. This developmental metaphor suggests that students get more and more self-regulated as the number of their competencies gradually increase. In addition to the increased competencies, Schunk and Zimmerman (1994) also add that the students must have multiple experiences with the task conditions through which they have both different options and self-control over learning and motivation, with many chances for self-appraisal. In this way, they can adapt to new learning conditions more easily and try to adjust their learning strategies accordingly as highly self-regulated learners.

STRATEGY AND SELF-REGULATION STUDIES IN LANGUAGE LEARNING

There is a wide variety of strategy and self-regulation research in language learning field. The results of Cohen’s study (2007) indicate that learners’ strategy use can systematically be associated with such concepts as self-management, autonomy, self-regulation, independent and individual language learning because increased strategy use can lead to greater autonomy. On the other hand, this doesn’t necessarily mean that every single autonomous learner selects carefully and effectively from a refined repertoire of learning strategies when dealing with a learning task or opportunity. This is indeed why, EFL learners need to have a working understanding of such metacognitive strategies as advance organization, planning, monitoring, and evaluating some of which are listed in the Questionnaire of Self-Regulated Foreign Language Learning Strategy designed and validated by Habók and Magyar (2018) and also adopted for the purposes of this study.

Wenden (1998) further argues that planning, monitoring and evaluating have widely been recognized as the main skills that facilitate self-directed learning in theoretical writings about self-instruction and self-direction in language learning. It is only natural that self-directed learning is enhanced by such metacognitive abilities because, as Vandergrift et al. (2006) assert, metacognition involves self-reflection as well as self-direction. Vandergrift’s main premise is that as we get more and more involved in learning a language, reflection on our own thinking processes can inevitably enable us to explore better ways to learn it more effectively.  Vandergrift (1996) also found an increased number of self-reported metacognitive strategy use at higher proficiency levels. As far as I am concerned, this finding points to a greater use of self-regulatory skills by more effective language learners.

As for the transmission model of developing self-regulation in language learning, Goh (2008) found that when students were asked to regulate their own listening process after explicit strategy instruction by their teacher in class, this caused a considerable increase in their self-sustained use of cognitive strategies, especially inferencing strategies and contextualization strategies. Goh (2010) also suggests the use of self-report checklists in order to develop self-regulated listening skills in language learning because such checklists encourage learners to have guided self-reflections on their own listening skill and strategy acquisition process. As a result, these guided reflections increase forward planning, which is an vital component of self-regulation and management of language learning.

INTEGRATING DIGITAL EDUCATION WITH SELF-REGULATION

Goh (2010) asserts that a learner’s metacognition involves an awareness of her own mental processes when participating in a learning task in addition to the self-regulation of these mental processes in order to fulfil the aim of the language task at hand. This self-regulatory competence is a sine qua non for enhancing students’ strategy repertoire and boosting the frequency of their strategy use in all four language skills. Because in the long run they will eventually feel the need to become independent language users with compensation, accommodation and language learning strategies of their own if they want to communicate effectively in academic or naturalistic settings where the target foreign or second language is predominantly spoken.

Goh (2010) also highlights the significance of the task knowledge as learners will also need to be knowledgeable about the goal, the requirements, and the nature of language learning tasks. That is to say, they should have some awareness of mental, affective and social processes engrained in language learning skills. However, these can all be futile attempts unless they have ways of improving their linguistic skills outside class. This is when self-regulated language learning becomes really essential.

Since EFL contexts usually lack a naturalistic English-speaking environment outside the classroom (Shin, 2014: 552), most Turkish learners of the English language can’t hear much English in their immediate environments. This is precisely why; digital education tools can especially be advantageous for such learners because they provide immediate and unlimited access to plenty of authentic and graded target language input. In other words, the use of digital education tools provides Turkish EFL learners with the opportunity to transcend the traditional concept of the classroom (Drexler, 2010) and have the potential to encourage learners to take greater ownership of their own learning process (Terrell, 2013). If they can combine their self-regulatory language learning skills and strategies with such digital resources as My English Lab English Central and Achieve3000 which are also the focus of this particular study, the results can be not only spectacular but also long-lasting in my opinion.

The very plain fact that technology already permeates every aspect of our lives (Stanley, 2013) is illustrated by this simple statistic: 55.1 % of the world’s entire population is consisted of internet users according to the world internet usage and population statistics by Internet World Stats (2018). These undoubtedly lead to the conclusion that most of our learners were born into this age of technology as digital natives and the need to integrate the use of digital education tools with language learning becomes especially compelling.

There is an increasing number of free digital education tools that are available to both language teachers and learners nowadays. Kahoot, Quizlet, Quizziz, Nearpod, Padlet, Google Classroom, Edmodo, Randall’s Cyber Listening Lab, Live Mocha, Classcraft, Duolingo, TedEd and Pear Deck are among the widely known ones. Digital classroom platforms such as Google Classroom and Edmodo makes the process of sharing educational data among teachers and students instantaneous and extremely easy as well as creating a sense of cooperative online learning community, which contributes to the creation of a positive learning environment. Quizlet and Quizziz are often used for vocabulary activities as they have live vocabulary competitions that regroup the learners and restructure the custom-tailored questions automatically, rendering the classroom management relatively easy. These vocabulary platforms also help learners recycle the target vocabulary sets and thereby facilitate short-term and long-term retention of students. Randall’s Cyber Listening Lab provides learners from all language levels with authentic oral texts as well as interactive comprehension questions in various different formats, i.e. multiple choice, fill the gaps. This listening comprehension platform also gives instant feedback on their performance as well as an intelligent answer key including a transcription with highlighted parts and hyperlinked glossing. Thanks to hyperlinked glossing, all learners can click on an unknown word without wasting too much time and a comprehensive definition pops up on the screen almost instantly. This was alone something unimaginable in the past.

Besides all these online education tools, Webb (2007) emphasizes a widespread availability of online literary text archives that offer countless valuable and teachable works. He also adds that digital literature offers an entire universe to “deepen and extend teaching and learning” (2007, p. 83). In fact, today literature is readily available in digital forms as Koskimma (2007) claims, literature is definitely alive and diligently seeking new ways of expression. These online literary archives sometimes have audio-recorded versions of full books available in their database. Therefore, after students can listen to these, role-based online discussions can be arranged on literary blogs or online discussion forums to take advantage of the learning opportunities that digital literature and online platforms have to offer.

The digital education tools of this particular research, namely My English Lab, English Central and Achieve300 platforms, give our students the freedom to set their own pace when working outside the class. They can also choose from a variety of language tasks that improve different skills and linguistic systems. Moreover, it provides learners with immediate, personalized and even interactive feedback in most instances.

Thanks to the visual media and interactive multimedia applications available to teachers and students in language classrooms today, we can work on viewing comprehension, which is basically the interpretation of paralinguistic clues such as body language and facial expressions, indispensable in listening comprehension (Brett, 1995). As such paralinguistic clues are an inseparable part of our daily lives, it makes great sense that listening tasks encompass viewing comprehension in addition to listening comprehension in the foreign language classroom.

Lastly, including the use of digital education tools in language teaching curriculums can open  our learners the doors of ample opportunities to benefit from authentic input as an integral element of their self-regulated language learning journeys throughout their entire lives even though they only have limited or no chance to practice their language skills outside the classroom.

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