METHODOLOGY
Introduction
This study investigates how different types of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation differently influence L2 learners’ perceptions of different types of teacher WCF. In addition, this study further delves into how do L2 learners’ perceptions of different types of WCF mediate the causal relationships between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and L2 writing achievement.
Research Framework
On the basis of the rationales in the literature review and the research questions, Figure 2 is a hypothesized path model of this study. L2 learners’ writing performance (named WS) is
hypothesized to be directly predicted by L2 learners’ perceptions of teacher CF about local issues (named WCFLocal in Figure 2) and L2 learners’ perceptions of teachers’ CF about global issues (named WCFGlobal in Figure 2). Three types of intrinsic motivation (named IMa, IMk and IMs in Figure2) and four types of extrinsic motivation (named EMe, Emi, EMid and
and WCFGlobal. In addition, IMa, IMk, IMs, EMe, Emi, EMid, EMi are hypothesized to directly influence WCFLocal and WCFGlobal. Finally, it is hypothesized that WCFLocal influences WCFGlobal.
Figure 2. Hypothesized path analysis model of this study.
Note: IMa= intrinsic motivation toward accomplishment. IMk= intrinsic motivation toward knowledge. IMs = intrinsic motivation toward stimulation. EMe= external regulation. Emi=
introjected regulation. EMid= identified regulation. EMin= integrated regulation. WCFLocal = L2 learners’ perceptions toward teacher written corrective feedback about local issues.
WCFGlobal = L2 learners’ perceptions toward teacher written corrective feedback about global issues. WS= writing scores.
Participants
This study employed the data from 330 undergraduate students studying in four North Taiwan universities. All the participants had studied English at least six years because they were required to learn English since Grade 7. They also somehow developed their writing skills when they prepared for the college entrance exam in high school. After enrolling in universities, some of the participants even took some English courses that were either directly or indirectly related to English writing. Overall, all the participants were supposed to have adequate knowledge of English paragraph writing, which is a skill that this study aims to analyze.
Instruments
The questionnaire (A/B) adopted from Tsao (2018) was used to collect the data from the participants. A 6-point Likert scale (1= strongly disagree; 2= disagree ; 3= somewhat disagree; 4= somewhat agree; 5= agree; 6= strongly agree) was employed in the questionnaire. The questionnaire has three parts to assess L2 learners’ personal background information, their motivation and their perceptions of teacher WCF. The first part is to get the information about the participants’ personal background knowledge. The second part is to assess L2 learners’ writing motivation, including extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.
According to SDT, there are four subtypes under extrinsic motivation, including external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation and integrated regulation, (Ryan &
Deci, 2000). Similarly, there are three subtypes under intrinsic motivation, which are IM toward accomplishments, IM towards knowledge and IM towards stimulation (Noels, Pelletier, Clément & Vallerand, 2000; Vallerand, 1997). The third part is to assess L2 learners’ perceptions of two types of teacher WCF. One type of teacher WCF is about L2 learners’ local problems in writing, such as spelling, punctuation, and grammar. The second type of teacher WCF is about their global issues in writing, such as the contents and the organization. Besides, the writing scores that this study used was also adopted from Tsao (2018). To assess the participants’ present English writing competence, they were asked to take an English paragraph writing examination. The raters of this English paragraph test were two experienced college lecturers. To ensure the level of agreement between those two raters, a scoring rubric was used and the Cronbach alpha coefficient was also calculated. After data collection is completed, IBM SPSS and Amos version 22 are used to analyze the data and draw the path analysis model.
Data Collection
The data adopted from Tsao (2018) was used in this study and the data collection steps
paragraph writing test (Appendix C). The questionnaire followed by the English paragraph writing test was administered to the participants during their regular class that lasts for 100 minutes for two consecutive sessions by their teachers. Comprehensive instructions for completing the questionnaire and the English paragraph writing test were given to the participants. For instance, they were aware that there was no so-called right or wrong answer.
All they need to do was to read every item on the questionnaire carefully and response to each item on the basis of their personal experiences and perceptions of learning English writing. Besides, they were also informed that the scores in their English paragraph writing test would not be included in their final writing course scores for the semester.
Data Analysis
This study will firstly pilot the scales adopted from Tsao (2018) to check their reliability and validity. Reliability will be checked by Cronbach’s alpha and validity will be analyzed with factor analysis. Then, path analysis will be further implemented to examine the causal relationships between seven types of motivation, L2 learners’ perceptions of two types of teacher WCF and L2 learners’ writing performance.
Path Analysis
Path analysis is an extension of multiple regression that can be used to assess direct and indirect causal relationships among variables in a complex hypothesized model or to examine which hypothesized models best fits the data (Schumacker & Lomax, 2010; Streiner, 2005).
The relationships among variables are in the ways of the direct, indirect and total effects (Dattalo, 2013; Raykov & Marcoulides, 2006).
This study firstly drew a hypothesized path model (Figure2) based on the rationales in the literature review. Then, path analysis will be implemented through IBM SPSS and Amos version 22 to examine the causal relationships between the endogenous variables and the exogenous variables. As shown in Figure 2, the exogenous variables consisted of IMa, IMk, IMs, EMe, Emi, EMid and EMin, and the endogenous variables included WCFLocal, WCFGlobal
and WS. The multiple regression approach to path analysis requires this study to perform as many analyses as the number of endogenous variables in the hypothesized path model (Meyers, Gamst & Guarino, 2016). Thus, this study will perform the following three regression analyses.
1) WS will be predicted from WCFLocal and WCFGlobal.
2) WCFLocal will be predicted from IMa, IMk, IMs, EMe, Emi, EMid and EMin. 3) WCFGlobal will be predicted from IMa, IMk, IMs, EMe, Emi, EMid and EMin and