The Contribution of Metacognitive Strategies to EFL Learners' Listening Comprehension Task Types

Abstract

This study was an attempt to examine the contribution of metacognitive strategies to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' listening comprehension performance and their metacognitive awareness. Fifty seven out of sixty eight EFL students were selected to participate in this study after their performance on Oxford Placement Test. The participants were then randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. After signing a consent form, both groups sat for the Preliminary English Test as their pretest. After filling in the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ), the students in the experimental group received five sessions of listening practice and strategy training using The Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA) Model (1999). The students in the control group, however, did not receive any instruction about strategies. After the strategy training the learners in both groups took another version of the PET as their posttest, and the experimental group filled in the MALQ again. Two types of tasks, namely, selection and completion were used to measure the participants' listening comprehension after the treatment. Several paired samples t-tests and an ANCOVA were conducted. The results indicated that the experimental group outperformed the control group in the listening tasks. The experimental group's metacognitive awareness improved dramatically after the strategy training. Meanwhile, the students performed significantly better in the selection tasks than in the completion tasks. Teachers are advised to allocate part of their teaching time to strategy training. Material developers should also take into consideration using task types because the performance of students may vary in different task types.