This paper recounts a sociocultural inquiry into bilingual students’ self-regulated strategic learning of language and subject content, through which we interpreted how and why the students appropriated resources strategically for self-regulated learning. It contends that sociocultural perspectives be adopted to enrich our understanding of the students’ strategic self-regulated learning.
The advancement of self-regulated language learning has provided a way for language learning strategy (‘LLS’) researchers to address the conundrum in which language learning strategy is problematized in terms of theorization and is indeed problematic in actual operationalization. This paper acknowledges that the rise of self-regulation can meaningfully complement in LLS researchers’ efforts to explore language learners’ strategic learning. It also contends that more studies adopt sociocultural perspectives to explore strategic language learning as co-regulated through interaction between individual learners and learning contexts, instead of seeing strategic language learning as regulated by individual selves. To this end, we present a sociocultural account of bilingual students’ self-regulated strategic learning of language and subject content in Hong Kong. Drawing on Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, we analysed a variety of data collected through the observation of lessons, stimulated recall and semi-structured interviews on 12 secondary students’ self-regulated strategy use in reading and writing. We explored and interpreted how and why they appropriated and used resources strategically for self-regulated learning. We identified that the students had used various artefacts (e.g. notes) and rules (e.g. assessment expectations) to negotiate their respective roles (e.g. subject content learners and language learners) in situated communities of learning that consist of subject teachers, classmates, private tutors, parents (and other family members), and friends. We also noted the differences and similarities between the high achievers and the underachievers with regard to their strategy use and the underlying reasons. The results inform the development of pedagogical schemes to enhance bilingual students’ self-regulated strategic learning of language and subject content. We also argue that more research on self-regulated strategic learning needs to be informed by a variety of theoretical perspectives so that we may better understand both how and why language learners strategically regulate the process of learning language and subject content.
