Training College Students to Use Self-Monitoring Strategies in English Speech Class

During the last three decades, education research has drawn attention to the framework for understanding the psychological basis of learning from a teacher-centered approach to a student-centered approach. The viewpoint has emphasized a major responsibility on students for their own learning. Students should not rely on instructors to learn successfully only in schools; on the contrary, they should promote themselves to be self-motivated, self-regulated, and independent thinkers and learners throughout their lives. John Gardner, former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare of the United States defined the favorable feature of self-regulated learning quite well--“ The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to theindividual the burden of pursuing his own education” (as cited in Zimmerman & Schunk, 1989). Self-monitoring has been considered as an influential sub-process for the success of self-regulation. The effects of self-monitoring on students learning have been explored in a variety of areas. A number of researchers have found that through the application of self-monitoring strategies, they can improve students’ academic performance (Lan, 1998), time on task (DiGangi, Maag, & Rutherford, 1991), classroom behavior (Maag, Rutherford, & DiGangi, 1992), and problem-solving ability (Delclos & Harrington, 1991). As an instructor in the English Speech course, I found that many EFL college students entered the English speech classroom with high levels of anxiety and low expectation, as described in their Precourse Self-evaluation Forms—“I don’t know any Public Speaking skills.”; “I don’t think I can deliver aspeech in front of people.”; “I wish I didn’t have to give the speech.”; “ I’m always nervous when I give a speech.”; “ No one will be interested in what I have to say.” Analyzing the reasons for students’ low self-efficacy in this class, I realized that it might be the challenges in English speech skills and the low involvement of self-monitoring strategies that prevented students from learning effectively. In order to learn successfully and effectively in college, students need to use self-monitoring strategies. Teachers can provide an external cue which stimulates a self-monitoring process to help students to engage in self-monitoring when studying English Speech. This current study was designed to investigate whether focused self-monitoring was more effective than general self-monitoring in improving students’ English speech performance. The secondary purpose of the study was to identify students’ self-monitoring strategies use and investigate self-monitoring practice in the English Speech course. Practically, the findings of this study should provide an effective educational approach to enhance students’ performance in English Speech class and self-regulation in learning.