L2 and FL Listeners’ metacognitive awareness: which strategies are reported? A cross-cultural comparative study

L2 and FL Listeners’ metacognitive awareness: which strategies are reported? A cross-cultural comparative study

Zoghlami, Naouel

During the last few decades, understanding the processes and strategies involved in L2/FL listening comprehension has received a firmly increasing attention. More specifically, the roles played by certain variables and the variance they might explain/account for in English speech comprehension have been the center of attention. Grounded in cognitive theory of learning, the present paper focuses on metacognition and its significant role in second-language (L2) listening comprehension. Metacognition refers to thinking about one’s own cognition and its regulation. Awareness and control of cognitive processes have proved to be necessary for successful listening. After the piloting and validation of a 23-item questionnaire designed to investigate listeners’ metacognitive knowledge, and to examine the degree of L2 and FL students’ metacognitive awareness while listening and report on the strategies commonly used, this instrument was administered to two groups of different cultural backgrounds: French (L2) and Tunisian (FL) students of English. The findings showed that the participants were generally aware of their difficulties as listeners. Yet, not all of them were fully conscious about the cognitive processes involved in listening comprehension. Some differences between the groups were also discovered. The analysis of strategy use demonstrated that Tunisian learners, unlike the French ones, believed more in the usefulness and importance of two kinds of strategies; those pertaining to the metacognitive processes of problem-solving and planning and evaluation. The paper ends by outlining the importance of metacognitve instruction for successful second language listening and self-regulated learning and pointing that this instruction needs to be culturally bound. The paper also considers the limitations of the study and offers some suggestions for future research.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2012-05-04

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