Developing Aural and Oral Skills of Beginner Learners of English as a Foreign Language Through Explicit Metacognitive Strategies Training

Abstract

Learners of foreign languages from different levels of education need to be active agents of their learning process. They need to develop strategic competence to become proficient learners and users of the foreign language. One way to foster this active and strategic role is to instruct learners in the use of Metacognitive Strategies. This work of research studied the effect of Metacognitive Strategies training on students’ aural and oral skills. Forty-two seventh graders from a public institution participated in a six-workshop training cycle on strategies for planning, monitoring and evaluating learning tasks, following the model of the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach- CALLA (preparation, presentation, practice, evaluation and expansion). The findings showed that Metacognitive Strategies positively impacted students’ aural and oral skills, favored their vocabulary repertoire, produced a favorable change in their attitudes towards listening and speaking, and raised their feeling of success and self-efficacy. This implies that Metacognitive Strategies should be incorporated into the regular language class to help students become more self-regulated learners.