The impact of metacognitive instruction on EFL learners' listening comprehension skill

The study explored the impact of an 8-week process-based metacognitive instruction with pedagogical procedures on listening comprehension performance and metacognitive awareness of 37 EFL listeners in Turkey regarding different listening proficiency levels and preparatory school backgrounds. A mixed-methods research design with a quasi-experimental study, including a pretest-posttest and an experimental-control group, was adopted in this study. The quantitative data were collected through the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ) to measure metacognitive awareness of listening before, during, and after metacognitive instruction, and an IELTS listening test as pretest and posttest to measure listening comprehension performance. The qualitative data was collected through stimulated recall protocols from the experimental group during and after the instruction to determine any changes in their metacognitive awareness over metacognitive instruction. Results showed that the experimental group showed a statistically significant increase in their listening performance on the final test to a medium extent. However, their metacognitive awareness of listening showed a non-significant increase at the end of the study, and this was also analyzed regarding the subdimensions of the MALQ. Besides, the experimental group had a significantly higher level of overall metacognitive awareness than the control group to a medium extent. Furthermore, more- and less-successful L2 listeners and preparatory school backgrounds made considerable differences in the study. Also, the quantitative findings on metacognitive awareness of listening were supported by some qualitative findings. Implications and suggestions for future research on learning and teaching L2 listening with the process-based metacognitive instruction were lastly discussed.