Metacognitive instruction in listening

Goh, C., & Taib, Y. (2006). Metacognitive instruction in listening for young learners. ELT Journal, 60(3), 222-232.

Background

Metacognitive instruction in listening for language learners takes different forms. One common approach involves a sequence of activities that encourages planning, monitoring, and evaluating strategies used for the listening text.

Aims

The study aimed to elicit primary school pupils’ metacognitive knowledge about listening in English and to determine how well they were able to communicate their metacognitive knowledge. It also investigated how useful process-based activities were for teaching listening to the pupils.

Sample

The participants were 10 Singapore primary school pupils between 11 and 12 years old. Although English was the medium of instruction, it was not the dominant language spoken by this group of pupils.

Method

The pupils participated in eight specially designed listening lessons that included traditional listening exercises, individual post-listening reflections on their listening experiences, and teacher-facilitated discussions that focused on specific aspects of metacognitive knowledge about listening. Other data included the results of the participants’ listening tests.

Findings

Data collected during the listening exercises indicated that there were significantly fewer accounts about strategy than factors that affected listening performance. The four commonly reported strategies were: planning, directed attention, selective attention, and inferencing. Inferencing and planning were more frequently used than the other strategies. The pupils did not include strategies pertaining to the accuracy and completeness of comprehension, such as monitoring and evaluating comprehension. Strategies to motivate themselves and to deal with negative emotions were hardly mentioned. Hence, the researchers concluded that the pupils had limited knowledge of comprehension strategies. However, they found that these pupils were well aware of test-taking strategies. Overall, there was a strong indication that metacognitive instruction had enhanced the pupils’ confidence, metacognitive knowledge, and listening test scores.

Implications

Although the participating pupils knew relatively few strategies compared with older learners, the authors predicted that with further metacognitive instruction, the pupils should improve in their strategy knowledge. Instruction would have to include explicit teaching of strategies such as prediction, comprehension monitoring and evaluation, and asking for clarification. Teachers can also encourage greater cognitive awareness by asking learners to report their thought processes during the listening exercises through individual reflections and process-based discussions. They should also mediate pupils’ perceptions about strategies and task demands, by helping them to see that not all strategies are appropriate for all tasks. Methods such as reflection and discussion, teacher modelling, integrated sequences of activities that focus alternately on text and process can also be used.

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