Metacognitive Strategy Instruction as a Means to Improve Listening Self-Efficacy among Iranian Undergraduate Learners of English

چکیده مقاله

Metacognitive strategy instruction (MetSI) has been shown to have a strong impact on various aspects of English as a second/foreign language instruction. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of MetSI on the improvement of listening self-efficacy among English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners. A group of sixty female undergraduate learners of English literature at a state-run university in Iran consented to take part in this study. After homogenizing the participants' English proficiency level using a sample section of the British Council IELTS test, 40 learners were selected whose English proficiency fell within intermediate to upper-intermediate level. A listening self-efficacy questionnaire (borrowed from Rahimi and Abedini, 2009) was used to measure the participants’ level of listening self-efficacy in the pre and post-test phases of the study. The participants were randomly assigned to treatment (n=20) and control (n=20) groups. The treatment group received 8 hours of MetSI during eight sessions based on the model proposed by Vandergrift (2003) while the control group didn't receive any explicit MetSI. The control group received the usual training in listening instead.