A Comparison of the Effect of Cognitive and Metacognitive Listening Strategy Training on Enhancing Listening Comprehension Among Iranian EFL Learners

Abstract

It is obvious that students feel anxious when they miss some parts while listening in the classroom. In addition, among all four skills required to use a language, listening skills are considered as one of the most important skills that educators are always concerned about. Therefore, training EFL learners to utilize cognitive and metacognitive listening strategies while listening in EFL contexts can assist them in the achievement of higher levels of listening comprehension. The main objective of this is to determine whether the learners are able to enhance their listening comprehension by using different cognitive and metacognitive strategies. The participants of this study were 80 intermediate male students of Iran language institute in Darab, Fars province. After screening the participants through the pre-test 47 of them were selected and assigned randomly to 2 experimental (n=22, n=25) groups and others were assigned to a control (n=21) group. Each intact class was randomly selected to two experimental groups including (1) cognitive strategies group; (2) metacognitive strategies group; and one control group without any intervention. One of the experimental group was taught to use some cognitive listening strategies while listening and the students in another experimental group were taught how to use some metacognitive strategies while listening. The results of the study indicated that metacognitive and cognitive listening comprehension strategy training based on CALLA instructional model could play a significant role in enhancing Iranian EFL learners’ listening comprehension. Finally, metacognitive listening strategy training could play a better role in enhancing listening comprehension, in comparison to cognitive listening strategy training.