The role of metacognitive awareness in reducing listening anxiety among EFL learners

Abstract

Listening anxiety has been acknowledged as one of the important affective variables that negatively affect the listening comprehension of students and their EFL learning in general. Considering the increasing role of metacognitive awareness in helping students regulate their cognitive and affective processes in listening, this study attempts to examine the extent to which metacognitive awareness leads to lower levels of listening anxiety among intermediate EFL learners. The quasi-experimental design was used in this research. The population of the study comprised sixty intermediate EFL learners at a private language institute who were randomly divided into an experimental group and a control group. The experimental group was exposed to eight sessions of explicit teaching of metacognitive listening strategies including planning, monitoring, problem-solving, and evaluation, while the control group underwent traditional listening instruction. Data were gathered through the use of Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ) and a Listening Anxiety Questionnaire and analyzed by means of descriptive statistics and paired-samples t-test and independent-samples t-test in SPSS. The results showed that the metacognitive awareness significantly improved after the intervention and the participants felt less anxiety when listening. Both changes were highly significant (p < 0.001). The results thus offer empirical support for incorporating metacognitive strategies in listening courses in EFL settings. This approach may help promote learner autonomy and improve emotional regulation, resulting in better learning environment, with practical implications for EFL teachers and researchers who would like to find efficient ways to enhance EFL listening skills.