Self-Regulation Strategies on Academic Motivation in Learning English Essay Writing in Students With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Students' inability to draft academic texts is among their main problems in learning English. Progress in this skill requires high concentration and motivation; thus, this problem even occurs in some cases as a disability. Self–Determination, which depends on fulfilling the basic psychological needs of individuals concerning autonomy, communication, and competence, can predict a desirable academic achievement. Students’ inability to draft academic articles in English is mainly due to their lack of motivation, leading to inefficiency in this skill. Moreover, students with Attention–Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms encounter further issues in this area. Numerous researchers believe that students' academic writing ability is undesirable. This problem, sometimes, could be mainly manifested as an inability to draft an article in English. The current study aimed to investigate the effects of self–regulation strategies on academic motivation in learning English essay writing, as a second language, in students presenting ADHD symptoms.

This was a quasi–experimental study with pretest–posttest and a control group design. The statistical population of the study consisted of all undergraduate students majoring in English (education, translation, & literature) at the Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, who were enrolled in the essay writing class, in 2017. In total, 126 students responded to the Conners’ Adult ADHD Rating Scales (CAARS; Conners et al., 1999). Among them, 62 volunteers who met the inclusion criteria were selected by the convenience sampling method. They were then randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. The inclusion criteria included the age range of 18–45 years and obtaining a score higher than the cut–off point (i.e., >50) on the CAARS. The study subjects completed the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (Ryan, 1982) at the pretest and posttest stages. Self–Regulation training, according to the package of Graham and Harris (2005) was provided in fourteen 105–minute sessions to the experimental group. The collected descriptive data were analyzed by mean and standard deviation. Furthermore, inferential statistics were performed by Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) and Chi–squared test in SPSS. The significance level of the tests was considered 0.05.

The present study data indicated that the mean±SD scores of intrinsic motivation increased in the posttest (2.80±0.24), compared to the pretest (3.25±0.13) in the experimental group. The ANCOVA results suggested that (after removing the effect of the pretest), teaching self–regulation strategies was effective in improving intrinsic motivation in learning English essay writing in the explored students with ADHD symptoms (p<0.001). Additionally, the relevant eta–squared was measured to be 0.541.

Implementing self–regulation strategies training method effectively increased academic motivation in learning English essay writing, as a second language, in students presenting ADHD symptoms.