Metacognitive Listening Strategy Awareness Raising: The Case of Iranian TEFL Majors

Metacognitive Listening Strategy Awareness Raising: The Case of Iranian TEFL Majors

The present research aims to investigate what effect metacognitive strategy awareness raising has on the listening performance of a group of intermediate English majors at Islamic Azad University, Malayer Branch. The study had an intact group, pretest-posttest, experimental design. The subjects were already assigned to groups by the university. Thus, two classes were selected for the study and were randomly assigned into a control group (n=19: 12 female & 7 male), and an experimental group (n=23: 14 female & 9 male). To be assured about the homogeneity of listening proficiency of both groups, a pre-test was administered and the results were analyzed using Independent Samples T-test and One-way ANOVA which revealed no significant difference between the two groups and between male and female learners of each group. Next, the experimental group received 10 weeks of metacognitive strategy instructions embedded into a speaking & listening course, while the control group received no metacognitive strategy instructions. At the end of the training, two different listening post-tests were administered to the groups. The results were analyzed using Independent Samples T-test and One-way ANOVA which showed that the experimental group outdid the control group significantly and that there was no significant difference between male and female learners of each group. This revealed that metacognitive strategy training facilitated the listening process and listening performance of Iranian EFL majors.