An Empirical Study of the Relationship between Motivation and Self-regulation

A correlational study examined relationships between motivational orientation, self-regulated learning, and academic performance for 180 first-year and second-year college students from English classes. A self-report measure of student self-efficacy, intrinsic value, test anxiety, self-regulation, and use of learning strategies was taken, and performance data were collected at the end of each semester. Self-efficacy and intrinsic value were positively related to cognitive engagement and students' final scores of each semester. The analysis shows that both intrinsic value and self-efficacy are the important predictors of academic performance and intrinsic value was strongly related to self-regulation and cognitive strategies. Test anxiety has a negative negative influence on both performances in the exams, and both cognitive strategies and the self-regulation play a very important role in the academic performance in English exams through the regression analysis, which prove the importance of the actual implementation of self-regulation in the learning process.