Adaptation and Validation of Self-regulating Capacity in Vocabulary Learning Scale

This paper reports on an adaptation and validation study of Self-regulating Capacity in Vocabulary Learning Scale (Tseng et al. 2006) in a Japanese EFL setting. The piloting phase revealed that factor structures were different from those in the original study. The main study, including a self-reported measure of procrastination to explore the convergent evidence of the construct validity, suggests that the scale can be a valid measure of self-regulation capacity in vocabulary learning in a Japanese EFL environment. These findings provide implications for future studies that utilize the same type of research paradigm. INTRODUCTION Self-regulating Capacity in Vocabulary Learning Scale (Tseng et al. 2006; hereafter SRCvoc) is a psychometric instrument (self-report questionnaire) intended to measure learners’ self-regulating capacity in second language (L2) vocabulary learning. It was developed to (a) introduce the concept of self-regulation developed in educational psychology to the field of L2 acquisition and (b) operationalize learning strategies as self-regulatory capacity and create a psychometrically sound measure of strategic learning as a new alternative to the measurement instruments commonly used for this purpose. The instruments are problematic in terms of their psychometric properties (see also Dörnyei 2005). Although the concept of self-regulation has been criticized (e.g. Gao 2006), Tseng et al.’s (2006) study has successfully made a conceptual advance by introducing it to the field of L2 acquisition. Among several theories of self-regulated learning (see Zimmerman and Schunk 2001 for a review), that of Tseng et al. (2006) is based on action and volitional control strategies proposed in Kuhl (1987) and Corno and Kanfer (1993). Action and volitional control strategies include those for protecting against distractions and facilitating task