Improving listening comprehension skills relying on metacognitive strategies – Focus on vocabulary and specific l2 instruction

Abstract

© 2016, Institute for Educational Research. All rights reserved. The present paper aims at investigating the application of an instructional method specifically focused on the expansion of metacognitive awareness and its effect on Serbian EFL students’ listening comprehension. The current study is a follow- up research of a similar study by Vandergrift and Tafaghodtari (2010). However, we sought to expand the previous research by investigating the relationship between the students’ current level of L2 (target language) vocabulary and listening test scores. Our study likewise differed in the sample of participants, the target language, teaching and testing material used, and the duration of the very experiment. To answer the proposed research questions we conducted an experiment with 57 Serbian secondary school EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners divided into experimental (n=27) and control group (n=30). The results of the pre- and post-tests of the two groups showed the beneficial effects of developing metacognitive strategies and the strong positive correlation between the level of vocabulary and listening comprehension. The paper underlines important pedagogical implications especially regarding the enhancement of metacognitive awareness and vocabulary proficiency of students in order to improve performance on listening comprehension tasks.