Participants
To bridge the gap of existing studies focusing on either children or adult learners,
participants in the present study were 74 high school freshmen in New Taipei City.
Since students were enrolled in the school based on their scores of Comprehensive
Assessment Program for Junior High School Students, getting a percentile ranking of
seventy to eighty, they were assumed to be intermediate English learners. Born in
Taiwan, an EFL context, most of them didn’t start learning English until the age of
nine, when English became a required subject in the elementary school. Having
studied the L2 for at least seven years; however, most of them still had difficulty
mastering English. Due to a lack of opportunities for language use, among the four
skills, listening skills, which should be acquired over time with adequate exposure and
sufficient practice, remained challenging for them.
Materials
In the present study, the listening exercise of each unit in students’ textbook was
selected as listening material. The listening exercise, titled “Beyond the Text”, served
as a follow-up activity in each unit, taking forms of either conversations or short
passages (see Appendix A). Although researchers underscored the importance of
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choosing authentic texts for listening task, in the EFL context, most students listen to
L2 not in real life situations but in language classrooms. Moreover, for these
intermediate learners, they had to learn to listen so as to listen to learn. Therefore,
textbook listening exercises which had been appropriately adapted from authentic
texts were regarded as suitable materials for this pedagogical sequence.
Design
The 74 participants in the present study were from two intact classes, one as the
control group (N=36), the other experimental group (N=38). The GEPT listening test
and MALQ were given in the beginning (pretest) and at the end (posttest) of the study.
In the eight-week treatment, participants in both groups listened to the same text but
with different procedures (See Table 5). While the experimental group followed the
metacognitive pedagogical sequence, the control group followed the conventional
listening procedure─listening and answering comprehension questions (Holden, 2002;
Mendelsohn, 2001). To ensure that none of the participants deviated from the steps of
treatment, the researcher, who also served as the two classes’ English teacher, carried
out the experiment in person.
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Table 5
Intervention of Control Group and Experimental Group Control Group Experimental Group
check answers verify comprehension and reconstruct the text Third Listening
- reflect on the process and set goals for future listening
Note. Listening script was provided for learners in both groups to verify comprehension in Third Listening.
Experimental Group Treatment
The experimental group followed the metacognitive pedagogical sequence with
the help of a note-taking worksheet (See Table 6) adapted from Vandergrift (2003a).
At the Pre-listening stage, the teacher encouraged students to make predictions of
possible information related to the topic. Students were asked to put down possible
key words in the “My Prediction” column.
After that, students listened to the text for the first time. While listening, students
put a checkmark beside the points they successfully predicted. They then wrote down
any information they had acquired in the “First Listen” column. Next, pair discussion
on their notes was facilitated by the teacher. To prepare themselves for the next
listening, students talked about unclear information and disagreements in order to
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decide which parts to focus particular attention on.
Later, they listened to the text for the second time, trying to resolve problems
raised after the first listening. In addition, they noted newly comprehended
information in the “Second Listen” column. Then, the next listening stage was
followed by a teacher-led class discussion, aiming to check comprehension and to let
students share personal reflections on their own listening process.
Afterwards, students listened to the text for the third time to check the points
which they had missed or misinterpreted earlier. At this stage, students were given a
transcript of the listening text to assist them in verifying the obtained information.
Finally, students reflected on their own listening process and set goals for future
listening in the columns below their previous notes.
Control Group Treatment
Students in the control group listened to the same text for three times. Different
from those in the experimental group, they were not guided through the predicting,
monitoring, and evaluation stage. Neither were they involved in pair or class
discussion. Following the format of conventional listening classes, students listened
and answered comprehension questions of the listening exercises on textbooks. Since
those in the experimental group had “First Listen,” “Second Listen,” and “Third
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Listen” stages in the metacognitive pedagogical cycle, students in the control group
also listened to the same text for three times, but with no instruction from the teacher.
Table 6
Note-taking Worksheet for the Experimental Group Date
Unit
My Prediction First Listen Second Listen
Reflections (difficulties encountered?
strategies used to solve problems?)
Goals for future listening
Note. adapted from Vandergrift (2003a)
Instrument
To answer the research questions, two instruments were included to measure
learners’ metacognitive awareness and listening comprehension.
Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ)
Developed by Vandergrift et. al (2006), MALQ (see Appendix B) has been the
only inventory designed especially for assessing language learners’ awareness and use
of metacognitive listening strategies to achieve comprehension.
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The instrument has not only theoretical support but empirical evidence. It was
based on previous questionnaires assessing metacognitive awareness of listening (Goh,
2002b; Vandergrift, 2005a; Vogely, 1995; Zhang, 2001), developed according to
guidelines (Brown, 2001, Dornyei, 2003, Gilhan, 2000), and was validated by factor
analysis with two large samples of language learners (N=966, N=512).
The 21 items reflect the five major factors underlying MALO: 1) planning and
evaluation, 2) problem-solving, 3) directed attention, 4) mental translation, and 5)
person knowledge (See Table 7). With a 6-point Likert scale ranging from “strongly
agree” to “strongly disagree,” it delves into the extent to which learners are aware of
the listening process and are capable of using metacognitive strategies to achieve
comprehension.
To avoid misinterpretation of any item in MALQ, the questionnaire was
translated into learners’ first language based on Chang and Li’s (2008) version. Then,
it was carefully verified by two experts in researching language teaching and learning.
The present study used the translated version of MALQ (see Appendix C) to inquire
into learners’ metacognitive awareness as well as perception of strategy use.
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Table 7
Taxonomy of Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ)
Factor Definition No. of for listening and evaluate the results of their listening efforts
5 1, 10, 14, 20, 21
2 Problem Solving Inferencing on what is not understood and monitoring those task, and focus their listening efforts
4 2, 6, 12, 16
4 Mental Translation
The ability to use mental translation parsimoniously
3 4, 11, 18
5 Person Knowledge
Learners’ perceptions concerning how they learn best, the difficulty presented by L2 listening, and their self-efficacy in L2 listening
3 3, 8, 15
Note. adapted from Vandergrift and Tafaghodtari (2010, p.477)
General English Proficiency Listening Test (GEPT)
The listening section at the intermediate level of General English Proficiency
Test (GEPT) was adopted to measure listening comprehension. Developed and
administrated by the Language Training and Testing Center (LTTC) in Taiwan, the
criterion-reference test has provided over 5.1 million English learners with valid and
reliable measurement of the four skills.
The listening test of GEPT is made up of three parts: 1) picture description, 2)
question or statement response, and 3) short dialogue. There are 15 items in each part,
all presented in the form of multiple-choice questions. Totally, a GEPT listening test
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consists of 45 items, with 120 being the full scores. As for the time limit, test takers
have to finish the test within approximately 30 minutes.
In the present study, the intermediate level GEPT listening test was used for
assessing learners’ listening comprehension. There are five levels of GEPT ─
elementary, intermediate, high-intermediate, advanced, and superior. Among the five
levels, the intermediate level targeted at learners whose L2 proficiency is similar to
that of students who have finished junior high English curriculum in Taiwan. Since
the participants of the present study were high school freshmen, the intermediate level
GEPT test served as an appropriate measurement for their listening comprehension.
Procedure
The eight-week study was conducted in normal class time. Once a week, students
in the present study took part in the listening activity in the English class. While the
experimental group (N=38) followed the metacognitive pedagogical cycle, the control
group (N=36) followed the traditional procedure─ listen and answer comprehension
questions.
In order to examine the effects metacognitive pedagogical cycle has on high
school students’ metacognitive awareness and listening comprehension, pre- and
post-tests were administrated. One week prior to the first listening class, students were
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asked to fill in the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ) and to
finish the listening section of intermediate General Proficiency English Test (GEPT).
After the eight listening lessons, they were required to fill in MALQ again and to
complete another intermediate GEPT listening test (See Table 8).
Table 8
Animal Imagery in Different Languages dialogue
2 In Love with a Cell Phone dialogue
3 The Wonderful World of Hayao Miyazaki short passage
4 Tips for Improving Your Memory short passage
5 Blame It on the Brain dialogue
6 Let’s Dig in! short passage
7 The Power of the Press short passage
8 Mother’s Hands short passage
Posttest 30 10
GEPT listening test MALQ
Data Analysis
To answer the first question of whether students in the experimental group have
any gain in metacognitive awareness, both groups’ responses from MALQ in pre- and
post- test were collected. Since MALQ is a six-point Liker-scale questionnaire, the
data were coded from 1 to 6 for one-way ANOVA analysis.
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To answer the second question of whether students in the experimental group
have better performance in listening comprehension, one-way ANOVA was performed
to analyze the pre- and post- test scores of intermediate GEPT listening tests.
As for the last question about whether learners demonstrating higher
metacognitive awareness score higher on listening comprehension test, responses
from MALQ and results of GEPT listening tests were analyzed via Pearson
Correlation.
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