The Effect of Metacognitive Strategy Instruction on Listening Performance, Metaconitive awareness and Listening anxiety of Beginner Iranian EFL Students

The present study investigated the effect of metacognitive strategy instruction on the listening performance, metacognitive awareness, and listening anxiety of EFL beginner students. The participants were 65, male and female, Iranian beginner EFL students, studying English translation and teaching in University of Zabol, Iran. After screening the participants through the TOEFL's listening section as the pre-test, 55 of them were selected and randomly divided into experimental (n=30) and control (n=25) groups. Besides the TOEFL's listening section, the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ) adapted from Vandergrift, Goh, Mareschal and Tafagdodtari (2006) and Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scale (FLLAS) developed by Kim (2005) were also administered to the experimental group. After a period of 8-session strategy instruction to the experimental group based on Vandergrift and Tafaghodtari (2010) model of strategy instruction, the experimental and control group's listening performance were compared using the TOEFL's listening section as the post-test. Moreover the MALQ and FLLAS were also administered to the experimental group at the end of the treatment in order to investigate the effectiveness of the treatment. The results revealed that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group on the post-tests and so the positive effect of the metacognitive strategy instruction on students' listening performance, metacognitive awareness and listening anxiety were verified.