Scholars have suggested English classrooms with sufficient context and fun activities to increase English performance and promote learning motivation. With the rapid growth of technology-enhanced learning, virtual reality (VR) has become increasingly popular in English learning. Using VR without a well-designed learning environment, however, may not guide students to focus on the learning content to achieve the learning goals. Hence, this study proposed a self-regulated-based gamified VR learning system to trigger students to monitor their learning process to achieve their learning goals. To examine the effectiveness of the proposed system, a quasi-experiment was conducted in a middle school in China involving three groups: students who adopted the self-regulated-based gamified VR system, students who learned with the gamified VR system, and those who learned with a conventional VR system. The results showed that the self-regulated-based gamified VR system significantly improved the students' English learning performance regarding their English vocabulary and speaking, self-regulation, learning motivation, learning attitudes, and meta-cognition tendency. Moreover, their reflections on the self-regulated-based gamified VR system were revealed and discussed.