THE EFFECT OF METACOGNITIVE STRATEGY TRAINING

ON THE LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF BEGINNER

STUDENTS IN SMP N 25 PADANG

Created By:
Nurul Izzah Qothiifah
18040007

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
SEKOLAH TINGGI KEGURUAN DAN ILMU PENDIDIKAN
(STKIP) PGRI SUMATERA BARAT
2021
 TABEL OF CONTENT

COVER .......................................................................................................... i

ABSTRAK ..................................................................................................... ii

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ................................................................. 1

A. Background of the study............................................................ 1-2

B. Research problem ...................................................................... 2-3

C. Objective of the study................................................................. 4

D. Formulation of the problem..................................................... 4

E. Limitation of the problem......................................................... 4

F. Significance of the study .......................................................... 4

G. Definition of key term .............................................................. 5

CHAPTER II REVIEW............................................................................ 6

A. Related Studies......................................................................... 6

B. Metacognitive strategies.......................................................... 10

1. Meaning of metacognitive strategies................................... 10

2. Models of Metacognitive Strategy Training...................... 11

3. Metacognitive Listening Strategies.................................... 12

4. The benefit of metacognitive strategies.............................. 13

5 How to apply metacognitive strategies................................ 13

C. Listening ability....................................................................... 14

1. Nature of listening.................................................................. 14

2. The importance of listening comprehension……............... 17

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 CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Problem

English is the language that will be able to use most widely, as it‟s spoken in
more countries than any other language. English is of course widely used as a lingua
franca as well as in international Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, where is it
the only official language (John, 2013 p. 8) in Agustina (2018:1). According to Crystal
(1997) in Agustina (2018:1), the language is now spoken by over two billion people with
different assents and competency levels. That is why English language may use in
general competency level all people in the world mostly can interact each other by using
English language.
The adoption of English language by Indonesia has brought about a tremendous
change in the educational policies of the country (Syamsinar, 2014 p. 113) in Agustina
(2018:1). In Indonesia English become a foreign language and become a compulsory
subject that has been learned by students in junior and senior high school and also in the
collage. There are so many advantages of learning English as a foreign language for the
children (Arif, 2015 p. 2) in Agustina (2018:1). That is why teaching English as a foreign
language become compulsory subject based on many advantages will help teaching and
learning process in the education.
It is common knowledge that listening in English is an active skill requiring
listeners to deal with a variety of complicated tasks, such as discriminating between
sounds and interpreting stress and intonation. It is also known that listeners use a variety
of mental processes to give meaning to the information they listen to. These mental
processes that listeners use to understand spoken English can be broadly described as
listening comprehension strategies. As indicated by Cohen (2000) in COSKUN Abdullah
(2010:35). There are four skills in learning English, one of them is listening. Listening is
the major component in English. Listening is a basic language skill, and as such it
benefits an important priority among four skill areas for learning students (Hamouda,
2013, p. 113). In listening the students should understand what they speak. Listening
process involves understanding speaker‟s accent or pronunciation, speaker‟s grammar

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 and vocabulary, and comprehension of meaning (Homuda, 2013, p. 117) in Agustina
(2018:2)
The term metacognition simply means thinking about thinking or cognition about
cognition. Flavell (1976, p. 232) in Bozorgian Hossein (2014:150) defined the term as
“one’s knowledge concerning one’s own cognitive processes or anything related to
them.” Metacognition refers to acquired knowledge that can be used to control cognitive
processes and is further divided into three knowledge categories: person, task, and
strategy (Flavell, 1976) in Bozorgian Hossein (2014:150).
Metacognition, despite its probable daunting and abstract connotations, drives our
daily activities related to learning. It refers to higher order thinking and includes active
control over cognitive processes in learning. That’s why metacognition is defined as
“thinking about thinking” by Anderson (2002) in Maryam Rahimirad and Mohammad
Reza Shams (2014:163).Without metacognition students are left high and dry lacking any
plan for how to start or monitor their performance and deprived of command over their
achievements so that they lose future learning advantages (O’Malley & Chamot, 1990) in
Maryam Rahimirad and Mohammad Reza Shams (2014:163).
In fact, metacognition assists students to be successful learners and some authors
have associated it with intelligence (Borkowski, Carr, & Pressley, 1987; Sternberg, 1984)
in Maryam Rahimirad and Mohammad Reza Shams (2014:163). Learning may occur
without metacognition, but it will not be long lasting and will fade away due to lack of
reflection. Metacognitive activities involve planning the way to approach a given learning
task, monitoring comprehension, and also assessing improvement over the completion of
a task.
listening is difficult for them because they do not know what the speaker said
sometimes it going too speed and they cannot comprehend the listening well, they often
lose their concentration while listening and they quietly do not really understand what is
metacognitive strategies and how it will apply in to help their listening comprehension.

B. Research problem
1. How are metacognitive strategies applied in SMP N 25 Padang in the learning
process?

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 2. How are the 4th semester students of SMP N 25 Padang listening ability?
3. Is there any correlation between metacognitive strategy and the listening
comprehension of beginner students?

C. Objective of the study

1. To find out how metacognitive strategies are applied in SMP N 25 Padang in the
learning process.
2. To find out the student of SMP N 25 Padang listening ability.
3. To find out if there is any correlation between metacognitive strategy and the
listening comprehension of beginner students or not.

D. Formulation of the problem

The researcher formulates the problem into “How are metacognitive strategies
applied in SMP N 25 Padang in the learning process”.

E. Limitation of the problem

This research focuses its research to find out if there is any correlation
significantly between student‟s metacognitive strategies, According to Rebecca Oxford
(1990, p.135) “metacognitive strategies allow learners to control their own cognition –
that is, to coordinate the learning process by using functions such as centering, arranging,
planning, and evaluating”, and student‟s listening comprehension that was destined to
mix method qualitative and quantitative data are thoroughly merged in one end of
continuum, maintained in the other end of continuum or combined in several ways.

F. Significance of the study

This study adds to the growing body of research of how adult EFL students
pursuing academic study may benefit from explicit, systematic teaching of listening
strategies. Doing this research contributes a method to introduce and model L2 listening
strategies. Results of the study provide insight into participants’ self-perceptions of their
use of listening strategies both before and after systematic classroom instruction.

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 It is hoped that this research will give some information to the development of
language teaching and learning, especially understanding the metacognitive strategies
related to the student‟s listening comprehension. Hope this study will give the students
new knowledge about metacognitive strategies and how it is applied toward their
listening performance of beginner students.

G. Definition of key term

1. Metacognitive strategies
The term metacognition simply means thinking about thinking or cognition about
cognition. Flavell (1976, p. 232) defined the term as “one’s knowledge concerning one’s
own cognitive processes or anything related to them.” Metacognition refers to acquired
knowledge that can be used to control cognitive processes and is further divided into
three knowledge categories: person, task, and strategy (Flavell, 1976). This study has
considered all the three categories in the metacognitive awareness listening questionnaire
discussed in the method section.
2. Listening skill
Listening skill is “an active process in which listeners select and interpret
information which comes from auditory and visual clues” (Rubin, 1994, p. 7).
Listeners are more proficient in their use of strategies as they acquire more knowledge
about the nature of strategies and consider a particular strategy that needs to be used
(Vandergrift & Goh, 2012).
3. Listening comprehension
Listening comprehension is more than just hearing what is said rather, it is a
child‟s ability to understand the meaning of the words he hears and to relate to them in
some way. When people hear a story, for instance, good listening comprehension
enables them to understand it, remember it, discuss it, and even retell it in their own
words.

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 CHAPTER II
RIVIEW
A. Related studied
Some studies about metacognitive strategies in comprehend listening have been
conducted. The researcher has taken some previous studies as the comparison and
guidance of this research.
First was done by COSKUN Abdullah (2010), investigating on the relationship
“The effect of metacognitive strategy training on the listening performance of beginner
students”. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of metacognitive
listening strategy training on the listening performance of a group of beginner preparatory
school students at a university in Turkey. So in my opinion, the purpose of this study was
to determine the effect of listening strategy training using metacognitive strategies on the
listening performance of a group of preparatory school students in beginners, Qothiifah
(2022:1). Two beginner groups, a control group (n: 20) and an experimental group (n:
20), were chosen as the participants of the study. The experimental group received five
weeks of metacognitive strategy training embedded into a listening course book, while
the other group did not. At the end of the training, a listening test taken from the teacher’s
manual of the same course book was administered to both groups. The analysis of the test
scores using t-test revealed that the experimental group did statistically better in the test.
The implication of the study is that metacognitive strategy training should be
incorporated into the regular listening teaching program to help students become more
effective listeners.
Second was created by Al-Alwan, Asassfeh and Al-Shboul (2013), investigating
on the relationship EFL learners‟ listening comprehension and awareness of
metacognitive strategies : how are they related ?. This study was conducted on a
convenient sample of 386 (207 female and 179 male) 10th graders from public school in
Amman, the capital city of Jordan. The participants, with an average age of 16 years old,
were native speaker Arabic who had been learning English for ten years. Their
proficiency level, as reported by their teachers is low intermediate. The collected data
included using two instruments: (a) Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire
(MALQ) (Vandergrifth, Goh, Mareschal, Tafaghodtari 2006) and (b) Listening

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Comprehension test (LCT) developed by the researchers for the purpose of this study.
The result indicated there was significant the relationship between listening
comprehension and metacognitive strategies awareness was answered using correlation.
The difference of this research is in the subject of Arabian native speaker.
Third Maftoon.P and Alamdari.E.F (2016) investigating on the relationship
“Exploring the Effect of Metacognitive Strategy Instruction on Metacognitive Awareness
and Listening Performance Through a Process-Based Approach”. This study explored the
effect of metacognitive strategy instruction on the listening performance and
metacognitive awareness of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in Iran. It also
strove to investigate how various aspects of learners’ metacognitive awareness, as
measured by each of the five Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ)
factors, were affected by metacognitive strategy instruction. The participants were 60
intermediate EFL listeners in two groups, ranging in age from 20 to 26. The experimental
group (N = 30) went through a guided lesson plan in metacognition for 10 weeks, which
focused on planning, monitoring, and evaluation. The control group (N = 30) was taught
by the same teacher and listened to the same texts without any guided attention to
process. The MALQ and a listening test were also used before and after the intervention
to track the changes in metacognitive awareness and listening performance. The results
showed that metacognitive strategy instruction led to a considerable variance in overall
listening performance and metacognitive awareness of learners. Furthermore, the analysis
of the five MALQ factors revealed a significant impact of metacognitive strategy
instruction on the metacognitive awareness of listeners.
Forth was done by Yang (2009) also indicates that one of the distinctive features
differentiating successful listeners from unsuccessful ones is their use of metacognitive
strategies and he supports the idea that teaching the role of metacognition in L2 listening
helps listeners to approach the listening task more effectively. In this study, we hold that
metacognition contains two concepts: metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive
strategies. Metacognitive knowledge covers knowledge about person, knowledge about
task, and knowledge about strategy. Metacognitive strategies refer to an ability to manage
and regulate the use of suitable learning strategies for different tasks, including such
strategies as planning, monitoring, or evaluating.

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 Fifth was done by Rahimirad Maryam and Shams Mohammad Reza (2014)
completed about “The Effect of Activating Metacognitive Strategies on the Listening
Performance and Metacognitive Awareness of EFL Students”. This study investigates the
effect of activating metacognitive strategies on the listening performance of English as a
foreign language (EFL) university students and explores the impact of such strategies on
their metacognitive awareness of the listening task. The participants were N = 50 students
of English literature at the state university of Qom, Iran. After screening the participants
from among 60 students, they were randomly assigned to the experimental and control
groups. The experimental group (n = 25) received the metacognitive strategy instruction
based on the models proposed by Vandergrift and Tafaghodtari (2010), while the control
group (n = 25) received just the listening input with no strategy instruction. The listening
module of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) was utilized to
evaluate the listening performance of the participants in both groups in pretests and
posttests, and the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ) instrument
was applied to measure the metacognitive awareness of the treatment group before and
after the treatment. The results of the IELTS test revealed that the experimental group
significantly outperformed the control group on the posttest and according to the analysis
of the MALQ instrument there was a significant improvement in the students’ level of
metacognitive awareness after strategy instruction. The interview results in the discussion
section also supported the findings and shed more light on the details.

B. Metacognitive strategies
1. Meaning of metacognitive strategies
In simple terms, metacognition is thinking about thinking. Its scholarly
description comes from cognitive psychology that approaches metacognition as one's
knowledge concerning one's own cognitive processes and products or anything related to
them. Active monitoring, consequent regulation and orchestration of these processes to
achieve a goal also seem to be the necessary components of metacognition (Flavell, 1976
cited in Goh, 2008). In link with this definition, metacognitive development can be
described as conscious development in one’s metacognitive abilities, such as the move to
greater knowledge, awareness and control of one’s learning, selecting strategies,

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monitoring the progress of learning, correcting errors, analyzing the effectiveness of
learning strategies, and changing learning behaviors and strategies when necessary
(Ridley et al., 1992).
Metacognitive strategies, as Anderson (2003) suggests, play more central role
than other learning strategies since once a learner understands how to regulate his/her
own learning through the use of strategies, language acquisition should proceed at a faster
rate. By the same token, strategic learners have metacognitive knowledge about their own
thinking and learning approaches, a good understanding of what a task involves, and the
ability to employ the strategies that best meet both the task demands and their own
learning strengths.
2. Models of Metacognitive Strategy Training
In all metacognitive strategy training programs, there are some common basic
principles that have been listed by Veenman et al. (2006 in Goh, 2008). They suggest that
these programs should be embedded in the subject matter to ensure connectivity. Another
key principle from their perspective is the necessity of informing learners about the
usefulness of metacognitive activities to make them exert the initial extra effort.
Prolonged training to guarantee the smooth and guaranteed maintenance of the
metacognitive activity is another feature they underline. Similarly, Chamot and Rubin
(1994) emphasize the importance of discovering and discussing strategies that students
already use for specific learning tasks, presenting new strategies by explicitly naming and
describing them, explaining why and when these strategies can be used and providing
extensive practice.
In Anderson’s model (2002), metacognitive strategy training is divided into five
primary components that are preparing and planning, deciding when to use particular
strategies, monitoring strategy use, learning how to orchestrate various strategies, and
evaluating strategy use. In the preparing and planning component, students are prepared
in relation to their learning goal and start thinking about what their goals are and how
they will go about accomplishing them. In the process of deciding when to use particular
strategies, learners think and make conscious decisions about the learning process and
choose the best and most appropriate strategy in a given situation. In the monitoring
strategy use component, they need to ask themselves periodically whether or not they are

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still using those strategies as intended. While learning how to orchestrate various
strategies; students coordinate, organize, and make associations among the various
strategies available. In the last component, evaluating strategy use, students attempt to
evaluate whether what they are doing is effective by means of selfquestioning, debriefing
discussions after strategies practice and checklists of strategies used can be used to allow
the student to reflect through the cycle of learning. At this stage, all the previous stages
are evaluated.
3. Metacognitive Listening Strategies
It is believed that listeners who could employ various listening strategies flexibly
were more successful in making sense of spoken texts, while listeners who did not make
use of adequate listening strategies appeared to focus only on the text or word-for-word
decoding (Bacan, 1992; Murphy, 1985; Vandergrift, 1996). Mendelsohn (1995) argues
that the use of listening strategies appears to be considered as a significant factor in
determining whether a learner is a skillful listener or not.
Metacognitive awareness of listening, as Vandergrift et al. (2006) define, is
learners’ cognitive appraisal or the metacognitive knowledge of their perceptions about
themselves, their understanding of listening requirements, their cognitive purposes, and
their approach to the task and their strategies. These strategies include five types of
strategies (i.e., problem-solving, planning and evaluation, mental translation, person
knowledge, and directed attention).
According to Richards (1990), problem-solving consists of a group of strategies
listeners employ to make inferences and to monitor these inferences. It is argued that
planning and evaluation strategies are those strategies that help learners to be prepared for
listening and to evaluate the results of their listening endeavors. Mental translation
strategies are those strategies that listeners are required to avoid if they intend to become
proficient listeners (Vandergrift, 2003). Person knowledge strategies, as pointed out by
Sparks and Ganschow (2001), involve listeners’ perceptions regarding the difficulty
offered by L2 listening and their self-efficacy in L2 listening, such as assessing the
perceived difficulty of listening and learners’ linguistic confidence in L2 listening.
Directed attention includes strategies that listeners employ to concentrate and to stay on

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tasks such as getting back on track when losing concentration or focusing harder when
having difficulty understanding (Rost, 2002).
4. The benefit of metacognitive strategies
The goal of teaching metacognition is to equip students with the tools necessary
to monitor they own learning (Marsha Lovett, 2008). As in process of learning
students need to take some devises to help students in comprehend the subject. They
can create goals for themselves, attempt to meet those goals, and revise their plan of
action if something goes awry (Marsha Lovett, 2008). It is give independence for
students where they can manage their own action to take and give the students chance
to correct their fault by revising the plan that they have made. Metacognition can be
used to help students master all subjects (Marsha Lovett, 2008). By knowing more
about metacognition will give more benefit for the students to help the students in
controlling and mastering the subject they want.
5. How to apply metacognitive strategies
Apply the concept to the problem with metacognitive strategies:
a. Stage I (planning), the teacher explained goals on a moderate topic studied,
conceptual planting taking place by answering questions which the teacher proposes
about the concept subject. Then the teacher guides students instill confidence and
awareness by asking students and students answering any questions in the material
teach or questions asked by teacher.
b. Phase II (monitoring), students work independent to solve the problems exercises
given. Master gave feedback individually, get around guide students in completing
subject problems. Feedback that is metacognitive leads the students focusing on
mistakes and give instructions to the students so that the students can correct
themselves, can control or monitor the process think as well as can save and reuse
ideas that have been found to solve that problem given.
c. Phase III (evaluation), conducted by teacher or students, evaluations from the
teacher leads on consolidations and more applications wide so that students get more
meaningful. While the evaluation of the students more towards what has been
understood from learning as well possible application of more problems (Abdul Muin,

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 2003 p. 39). The strategies are applied by planning, monitoring and evaluating on
three phases that give more feedback to the students.

C. Listening ability
1. Nature of listening
To investigate the first question (listening performance of both experimental and
control groups before and after 8 sessions), listening samples of British Council IELTS
were used. Initially, listening pretests and posttests were developed in six formats
(multiple choice, short answer questions, table completion, form completion, sentence
matching, and labeling a diagram). After the pilot study and based on the students
feedback and also the expert idea of a panel of instructors four of the six formats
(multiple choice, table completion, short answer questions, and form completion) were
selected for both pretests and posttests. The content of both tests was identical, but the
test formats were different to avoid test-wiseness given the short intervention time of five
weeks.
Listening passages
Sixteen listening passages with good audio quality were selected from a variety of
oral texts considering the participants’ age and taste. The topics consisted of issues of
general interest such as health, entertainment, education, etc., and varied in length. An
attempt was made to start with simpler and shorter listening passages. The topics were
parallel for both control and treatment groups during eight sessions and the difference
was just in strategy instruction.
Listening is the process receiving, make a meaning word, and answering what is
being spoken and nonverbal messages. Listening is a process of receiving what the
speaker says, making and showing meaning, negotiating meaning with the speaker and
answering, and creating by participation, creativity and empathy (Gilakjani and sabouri,
2016, p. 1671). The students should comprehend listening well because it helps them to
be able to identify what the speaker says in doing the communication. Listening is the
ability to identify and understand what other saying (Saricoban, 2012, p. 1). In order to
comprehend the listening the students should have ability to make an outlines of

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messages using they different strategy and try to make meaning from it. They should also
have the ability to respond to what it is said (Darweesh, 2014, p. 2).

2. The importance of listening comprehension

Listening comprehension can be regarded as an important language skill to
develop. Language learners are interested in understanding target language (L2)
speakers and they want to be able to access the rich variety of aural and visual L2
texts available via network-based multimedia. In addition, as some scholars believe,
listening comprehension is at the heart of L2 learning and the development of L2
listening skills can play a significant role in developing other language skills (e.g.
Dunkel 1991; Rost 2002, as cited in Vandergrift, 2007). By considering the above-
mentioned importance, it is important to develop L2 listening competence; however,
second language learners are rarely taught how to listen effectively although they are
aware of the importance of this skill (e.g. Mendelsohn 2001, 2006; Berne 2004;
LeLoup & Pontiero 2007, as cited in Vandergrift, 2007).
The important of listening comprehension has been felt not only for the students
in the school but also for professionals of work or worker. To be able to listen well
must have more concentration and also need a quick understanding. When listening, a
lot of factors should be specifically paid attention. They are context, facial
expressions, and body gestures that are very important for the listener to facilitate the
understanding of what is conveyed by speaker (Ziane, 2011, p. 10).
Listening comprehension is, nevertheless, a big challenge for both English as a
foreign language (EFL) listeners and instructors, which may at times lead to
frustration, poor listeners’ performance, or inadequate attention paid in the classroom.
This, as Lynch (2011) maintains, can emanate from the complex nature of listening.
One way to mitigate the complexity of listening comprehension for listeners is to use
“metacognitive strategy instruction” as a process-based approach to develop and
facilitate the process of listening comprehension (Goh, 2008). Through this approach,
teachers can make learners conscious of the need to focus on using appropriate
strategies of planning, monitoring, and evaluation (Goh, 2000, 2002; Vandergrift,

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2004). In other words, metacognitive strategy instruction can not only help language
learners to enhance their listening performance but also help teachers to reconsider
how to approach and teach listening skill in the classroom. Another way teachers can
help learners enhance their listening performance and develop a pedagogical
understanding of metacognition is to put emphasis on the process rather than the
product of listening, which is still inadequately taken care of in many language
classrooms, especially in EFL contexts. This, as Goh (2008) maintains, could be
made possible through engaging learners in a wider range of metacognitive activities
in the classroom within a process-based approach that can not only help them develop
a deeper understanding of themselves as L2 listeners, and have a better perception of
the demands and the process of L2 listening, but also teach them how to regulate their
own comprehension and learning.

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