Psychological characteristics of metacognitive strategy use and vocabulary development paths among vocational university students in a personalized english teaching environment.

This mixed-methods quasi-experimental study examined the psychological correlates of metacognitive strategy use and the vocabulary development paths of vocational college students learning English within a personalized teaching environment. Two intact non-English-major classes at a vocational college in eastern China (N = 120) were randomly assigned at the class level to an experimental condition receiving a 16-week personalized intervention and a control condition receiving conventional whole-class instruction. Quantitative data were gathered through a vocabulary-oriented adaptation of the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire, a psychological characteristics inventory assessing self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, and learning anxiety, and the Vocabulary Levels Test and Vocabulary Knowledge Scale, administered at pretest, midpoint (Week 8), and posttest (Week 16). A qualitative strand comprising semi-structured interviews with 18 stratified-purposive participants supplemented the quantitative measures, and independent observer-rated treatment fidelity was documented across 25% of sessions. Correlation analyses indicated dimension-specific associations: self-efficacy co-varied most strongly with monitoring, whereas learning anxiety was inversely associated primarily with planning. The experimental group showed significantly higher posttest scores on all three metacognitive dimensions and on both vocabulary breadth and depth, with medium-to-large effect sizes. Stepwise regressions revealed divergent predictor profiles: breadth was associated with self-efficacy and monitoring, while depth was associated with intrinsic motivation and evaluation. Qualitative accounts converged with these patterns, pointing to self-efficacy repair, reduced evaluative threat, and volitional shift as experiential correlates of the observed changes. Given the correlational and group-based nature of the analyses, the findings are interpreted associatively rather than causally; they nonetheless offer theoretical refinement to models of L2 vocabulary acquisition and practical guidance for vocational English program design.