The authors conducted two consecutive studies to investigate Japanese university students' smartphone-based L2 learning (e-Learning) strategies within the framework of self-regulated learning. The participants of both studies were freshmen of a women's university in Japan, who engaged in an e-Learning courseware, designed to improve English listening skills, as an out-of-class activity for their listening class.
In the first study, while a majority of the students were "deadline-oriented" type, who procrastinated e-Learning until the last minute before the due date, there were some students who constantly logged in (many times) and continuously studied (many weeks). The authors found that there was a positive correlation between learning outcome as assessed by the increment of their TOEIC listening scores and both the number of logins and the number of weeks they studied.
In the second study, the authors selected 10 students from their first study as Good e-Learners, who logged in many times and studied many weeks, and conducted semi-structured interviews to identify specific learning strategies they employed to enhance their e-Learning.
The interview data showed that these Good e-Learners utilized metacognitive strategies (e.g., planning, attention focusing, monitoring), cognitive strategies (e.g., listening and vocabulary learning strategies), social strategies (e.g., studying with others), and affective strategies (e.g., reducing anxiety, refreshing themselves). There were some strategies mediated by technology (e.g., being reminded by calendar app., monitoring e-Learning score page). A detailed scrutiny of the data revealed that about half of these strategies were not self-initiated but were told or recommended to use by others (e.g., teachers and friends).
Given these findings, the authors argue that effective strategies used by Good e-Learners are not necessarily self-regulated, and that other-regulation "to choose, teach, scaffold, or monitor their use of strategies" (Thomas & Rose, 2019, p. 254) is definitely necessary even in smartphone-based e-Learning. The authors therefore suggest that Japanese university students in e-Learning environments should initially be provided with some forms of other-regulatory help that scaffold their use of learning strategies. It is also argued that the scaffolding should be taken down gradually so that they would eventually become self-regulated strategic L2 learners.
