Tim McDonald
Literacy Services Coordinator
Las Vegas-Clark County Library District
833 Las Vegas Blvd. N
Las Vegas, NV 89101
mcdonaldt@lvccld.org
MPAEA Conference Report
The Mountain Plains Adult Education Association (MPAEA) 2014
Conference took place April 27-30 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Attendees represented nine states comprising the MPAEA (Arizona,
Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Utah
and Wyoming) and also included presenters, vendors, and guests
from across the nation. Below is a report on Lu Yu’s presentation on
Strategic Language Learning Unlimited given at the conference
on April 28.
Lu Yu presented Strategic Language Learning Unlimited at the MPAEA conference in
Santa Fe, New Mexico. Ms. Yu is a doctoral student at the University of Arkansas as well as
a former English as a Second Language (ESL) student. Her presentation focused on the
topic of student self-regulation in adult ESL education. In the field of Second Language
Acquisition, self-regulation is a fairly new concept, according to Ms. Yu. This session
examined the relationships among self-regulation, motivation, learning strategies, and
academic achievement. Implications for effective self-regulation instruction for ESL adult
learners were also discussed.
Self-regulated learners engage in metacognition (thinking about thinking), goal setting, and
active behaviors that tend to produce better academic success. Research by Pintrich (2003)
finds that students with better self-regulatory skills often display better learning in the
classroom.
Instructors should encourage students to practice activities such as planning, setting goals,
monitoring, and evaluating. Goals should be challenging, yet manageable. To increase
student motivation, it is also important for students to take responsibility for their successes
and failures; this results in increased effort and persistence. If a student believes success is
due to external factors beyond their control (an effective teacher, luck, etc.), they are likely
to give up when they face a challenge. Students who attribute success to internal,
controllable factors, on the other hand are more likely to be motivated and persist in
challenging situations. The idea is to believe that success depends on effort, and to
empower students to believe they are in control of their own success. This knowledge has
utility for adult educators who want to motivate their students to succeed.
For more information on the presentation, contact Lu Yu at lxy011@uark.edu.