Metacognitive Pedagogical Sequence for Less

This study investigated the impact of metacognitive pedagogical sequence on development of less-proficient Thai EFL listeners’ L2 listening metacognition and listening comprehension achievement over a semester. Sixty-four university students who were enrolled in a listening course participated in a quasi-experimental study. Both the intervention group (IG) and the comparison group (CG) received listening lessons comprised of pre-listening, during-listening, and post-listening activities. Each lesson was designed to allow both groups to practise listening to the same video and audio texts the same number of times. However, the IG engaged in key metacognitive processes such as prediction/planning during pre-listening, monitoring, evaluating, planning, and problem-solving with peer dialogue and collaboration in the during-listening, and post-listening activities followed by reflection and goal-setting. Students’ L2 listening metacognition development was assessed using the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ) at the beginning, during, and at the end of the intervention and after the final listening test. Data were also collected and analysed from responses to an open-ended questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. ANCOVA showed no significant differences between the two groups on the scores of the achievement post-tests. However, repeated-measures ANOVA showed significant gains by the IG in development of metacognition of three listening-related factors, Problem Solving, Planning and Evaluation, and Directed Attention, while only Planning and Evaluation was found to be significant in the CG. Possible reasons for these statistical results are explained, supported by the qualitative findings. Implications for future research and listening pedagogy using the metacognitive pedagogical sequence for less-skilled listeners are also discussed