The roles of learning strategies and motivation in online language learning: A structural equation modeling analysis

Abstract

Students' active regulation of learning, through being motivated and a variety of cognitive and metacognitive strategies, is crucial to their online learning success. Despite the large numbers enrolled in online language courses, very little is known about students' motivation and strategy use in these learning environments, or how they may affect their online learning outcomes. This study helps fill this gap by examining students' motivation and learning-strategy use across a number of online language courses, and investigating the role of motivation and such strategies within the framework of self-regulated learning. Based on data about online language-learning strategies collected from 466 high-school-level online language students in a Midwestern virtual school, our findings indicated that online learning strategies operated at a moderate level in the process of foreign language-learning. Further analysis using structural equation modeling revealed that the use of online learning strategies predicted students’ online learning outcomes.