University of Mazandaran

Department of English Language and Literature

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

The effect of metacognitive strategy instruction on less-skilled EFL listeners’

motivation

Supervisor:
Dr. Hossein Bozorgian
Advisor:
Dr. Fatemeh Khonamri
By:
Amir Mohammad Khoje Niaz Abadi

Tonekabon, Iran
June 2021
 Acknowledgement

This study took roughly two years to be completed. Even though the journey was a
roller coaster and full of obstacles, arriving to the destination felt sweet and
memorable. However, thanks are in order before start.

First and foremost, I must thank my supervisor, my role model and my teacher, Dr.
Bozorgian. I have been striving to be a dedicated teacher and researcher like him
since eight years ago and he is my inspiration still. His immense patience and
guidance during the process of writing my thesis was exceptional. I truly wish I
was a better student and I forever feel indebted to him.

Second, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Khonamri. Her positive presence
and encouraging personality is unheard of and I will always be grateful to her. She
is a great teacher I believe.

Third, my thesis would not have seen the light of day if it was not for the support
of my family through the years. They have been my light in darkness and difficult
times since my days in kindergarten and I am always humbled before their
kindness. Some debts can never be repaid.

Fourth, I would like to thank my friends and professors at the University of

Mazandaran. My friends always saved me from loneliness and alienation and my
professors had been shaping me to be the person I am today during the past eight
years.

I feel blessed and honored and many are not as fortunate as I am to feel this way:
needless to say any errors in my way are entirely my own responsibility.
 Abstract

Table of Contents

List of Tables

List of Figures

List of Abbreviations and Acronyms

Chapter I

Introduction

1.1 Introduction

There can be no foreign language learning without maintained motivation

(Adolphs et al., 2018). Zoltan Dörnyei has somewhat dominated researching
motivation over the years and even though studying motivation dates back to
1900s (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011), it is constantly going through change and
evolution. Meaning there is still much ground to cover. Listening too is one of the
least understood, the least researched, and historically the least valued skill
compared to reading, writing, and speaking (Wilson, 2008). Therefore it is fair to
say that the road towards researching motivation and listening is very much open.

The first element in focus throughout this thesis is listening. Teaching listening to
EFL learners can be a very demanding job due to the nature of this essential skill.
Rost (2015) believes that deep and highly sophisticated neurological, linguistic,
and semantic processes underlie listening, making it perhaps the most complicated
behavior of us human beings. Wilson (2008) too in his interesting book titled ‘How
to Teach Listening’ states that this skill is so detailed that it seems impossible to do
listening when you look at it under the microscope and he argues that listening is
an amazingly complicated cognitive process. Beside the cognitive processes
mentioned above there is another concept named pragmatic competence which
shadows over listening and adds to its complexity. Pragmatic competence pertains
to the social dimension of listening. Humans are social beings and listening almost
always occurs in a certain social context. Features of context introduced by Hymes
(1964) like topic, setting, event, and purpose are important determiners of listening
in interaction. There has been a rise in utilizing metacognitive strategy instruction
to teach listening over the past two decades (Bozorgian, 2015) and it is too one of
the most important elements of this thesis.

The second element in focus throughout this thesis is motivation. The concept of
motivation too like listening is quite detailed and sophisticated. Some parts of its
complexity drives from the fact that motivation is abstract and not directly
observable, meaning when we talk about motivation we are referring to various
mental processes and states and there are no objective measures of motivation
(Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011). According to Dörnyei and Ushioda (2011), the word
motivation has its roots in the Latin verb movere meaning ‘to move’. Questions
like the reason why someone makes certain choices, why someone acts in a certain
way and how much effort someone is willing to expand and someone’s degree of
persistence in action can be answered through sensing how much motivation
someone has. Answering motivation related questions is vital in the field of foreign
language learning. Boo et al. (2015) agree and have found out that the growth in
published studies of motivation in the field of language learning has been
phenomenal.

The study at hand though has its eye on whether metacognitive strategy instruction,
as a mediator, has impact on the motivation of less-skilled EFL listeners or not.
The next thing to have in mind is that researching listening and motivation is not as
simple as it seems and researchers have to take many details into consideration.
The difficulties of researching listening is the focus of the next section.

Difficulties of researching listening

Before moving on it should be mentioned that the word ‘difficulty’ in this section
does not mean impossible or very difficult and it merely refers to the precautions
researchers have to take. The world of research is a vast one. Creswell (2018)
contends that even at the early stages of conducting a research one should reflect
on philosophical worldviews, make a choice among research designs and select a
method.

Conducting a listening research has other components too. A researcher working

on listening should be aware of certain orientations while doing research in the
field. According to Rost (2015), the first orientation to take on is a questioning
orientation, meaning asking detailed questions and improving the questions before
addressing them. Having a questioning perspective is essential during every step of
a listening research.

The second orientation to take on is a sociolinguistic orientation. Lee McKay &

Rubdy (2009) contend that the social atmosphere of outside plays an important role
inside the class. Researching listening from a sociolinguistic perspective means
focusing on the relationship between language use and social factors, relationship
between participants and how our cultural background influence how we listen
(Rost, 2015).

The third orientation to take on is a psycholinguistic orientation. The

psycholinguistic aspect of foreign language acquisition has received a great deal of
attention during past few decades. Irina (2019) for instance, believes that having a
structure of strategies for second language acquisition made of psycholinguistic
concepts alongside creative language acquisition is essential. Rost (2015) too
contends that a listening researcher should focus on questions like how listeners
decode the input, understand messages, build meaning, and encode meaning in
memory.

The fourth orientation to take on is a developmental orientation. Learning takes

time and learning to listen is no exception. According to Rost (2015), a listening
researcher should always consider developmental aspects of listening and ask
questions like what aspects of listening ability develop most quickly and what
factors seem to promote development.

1.2 Statement of the problem

The first facet of this study is listening. Listening has such a relevance in our lives
that it is fair to say there is no spoken language without listening. However,
“despite the importance of listening, of the four skills (reading, writing, listening
and speaking) that are generally recognised as the keys to knowing a language,
listening is probably the least understood, the least researched, and historically, the
least valued” (Wilson, 2008, p. 17). Nunan (1997) goes even further and labels
listening as the Cinderella skill, often overshadowed by its older sister, speaking.
Researching, teaching and learning listening has always been an underrated
concept in the field of EFL.

Another facet of this study is motivation. According to Walker and Symons

(1997), it is challenging to define motivation, since too much meaning is attached
to its term. Dornyei and Ushioda (2011) believe that most researchers are in
conflict over defining motivation, but all of them agree that motivation is
responsible for why people decide to do something, how long they are willing to
sustain the activity, and how hard they are going to pursue it. It is clear that
motivation should be one of the main concerns in the field of EFL, since
motivating language learners is the ultimate goal and basis of language learning
journey. Brown (2006) contends that motivation is an essential element of
listening. While emphasizing the importance of listening and motivation, he writes
that “because listening is so challenging, teachers need to think carefully about
making our activities successful and our content interesting” (Brown, 2006, p. 1).
However, very little attention has been paid to motivation in general and specially
motivation in listening.

The third facet of this study are less-skilled EFL listeners. Bozorgian (2012) in a
small-scale study showed that metacognitive strategy instruction is better suited for
less-skilled EFL listeners. Cross (2010) too found the same results and showed that
less-skilled listeners benefit more from metacognitive strategy instruction. What is
vague now is whether metacognitive strategy instruction fosters less-skilled EFL
listeners’ motivation in listening comprehension or not.

1.3 Significance of the Study

This thesis provides an important opportunity to advance the understanding of

difference between the level of improvement of less-skilled and more-skilled L2
listeners based on pre-test and post-test. This might extend the existing literature
and be beneficial for researchers to consider other factors when they try to come to
a conclusion about more-skilled and less-skilled L2 listeners.

The study will offer researchers some important insights for considering more units
of analysis. Supposedly, due to the lack of adequate and suitable units of analysis,
there might be a slight of chance to be mistaken on the level of making
comparisons between two aforementioned groups. This study is fruitful to extend
the existing literature by focusing on some new units of analysis.

The findings should make an important contribution to the field of assessment. Not
only should researchers of metacognitive structures pay more attention to these two
groups when they want to assess them, but also researchers of other fields of
studies should be more careful about assessing more-skilled and less-skilled
learners.

1.4 Research Questions

1. Does metacognitive strategy instruction increase less-skilled EFL listeners’

motivation in listening comprehention?
2. What are less-skilled EFL listeners’ attitudes towards motivation in listening
comprehention?

1.5 Definition of Key Terms

1.5.1 Listening

Rost (2013) contends that a definition of listening and a complete understanding of

it must account for neurological, linguistic, semantic, and pragmatic processes
underlying listening.

1.5.2 Motivation

Dornyei (1998) contends that motivation is a frequently used term, but because of
its complexity and nature, there is little agreement among researchers regarding the
meaning of this concept. What researchers do agree upon is that motivation is
responsible for determining human behavior by energizing it and giving it direction
(Dornyei, 1998, p. 117). Researchers also agree that motivation is responsible for

• the choice of a particular action,

• the persistence with it,

• the effort expended on it.

(Dornyei and Ushioda, 2011: 4)

1.5.3 Metacognitive strategy instruction

Flavell (1979) was the first scholar to introduce the term metacognition and
according to him it includes metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive
experience. The researcher defines metacognition as “one’s knowledge concerning
one’s own cognitive processes and products or anything related to them . . . active
monitoring and consequent regulation and orchestration of these processes in
relation to the cognitive objects or data on which they bear, usually in the service
of some concrete goal or objective.” (Flavell, 1979: 232).

According to Paris and Winograd (1990), metacognition can be deconstructed into

two key elements which are called control aspects and knowledge about cognitive
processes. The control aspects deal with the use of metacognitive strategies.
Metacognitive strategies are mental executive skills that serve to “control cognitive
activities and to ensure a cognitive goal is achieved (Xing, Wang, & Spenser,
2008, p.46). Fostering the three dimensions of metacognitive knowledge will assist
learners in appraising themselves and selecting appropriate strategies for
improving their performance. Thus metacognitive instruction means teaching
learners how to select and employ strategies as well as boosting their
metacognitive knowledge (Goh & Taib, 2006).

Chapter II

Review of the Literature

Chapter III

Methodology

Introduction

The third chapter of the thesis is about the methodology. First, the design of
the research that is quantitative in nature is described. Then, the participants
and their characteristics are explained. Further, the instruments used in the
study, including Oxford Placement Test (OPT) and IELTS listening test
(Cambridge IELTS), in addition to the information related to the procedure
are described. Finally, this chapter finishes with an explanation of data
analysis.

Methodology

A quantitative approach was used to address the research questions. In doing

so, quasiexperimental design (Cook & Campbell, 1979) was utilized since
assignment and selection of participants were not randomized.

Participants

65 Iranian students participated including 31 more-skilled (15 advanced and

16 upperintermediate) L2 listeners and 34 less-skilled (18 intermediate and 16
lower-intermediate) L2 listeners. The participants were between 20 and 30
years old. 14 were male, and 51 were female.

Instruments

Three research instruments were applied in the present research study to

answer the research questions:

• An Oxford Placement Test (OPT) (Allan, 2004) (see Appendix B)

• IELTS listening tests (Scovell et al., 2004) (see Appendix C)

• Collins listening for IELTS book (Aish & Tomlinson, 2011) (see
Appendix D)
 An Oxford Placement Test (OPT) was used for the sake of homogenizing L2
learners’ level of English proficiency (Allan, 2004). The OPT included 200
multiple choice items on two sections, namely listening, and use of English (i.e.
vocabulary, grammar, and reading). In addition, the grammar section
contains 100 questions focused on typical verb tense and sentence structure.
Participants normally have a maximum of 90 minutes for the test. This test
has a high measure of reliability calculated as 0.9 (Geranpayeh, 2003).

The materials used in listening activities should feature authentic and natural
everyday speech. Field (2000) suggests that listening activities should be
authentic and take the following two points into consideration. First, learners
should be carefully briefed so that they feel comfortable about being exposed
to listening texts where they may have problems understanding the message.
Second, teachers should grade the difficulty of tasks to fit it to the
comprehension level of the learners rather than grading the text so that
learners would be able to achieve it. Therefore, in order to consider the
authenticity, IELTS listening test was used to examine the learners’ listening
comprehension in the pre- and post-tests. IELTS listening tests, developed by
Scovell et al. (2004) consisted of four components and each with ten questions
focusing on daily conversation, public speech, academic discussion, and
academic lecture. In addition, the choice of the IELTS listening texts was
based on the view that the learners participating in this study intended to take
the IELTS test in near future. All the recorded IELTS listening texts for four
 lessons were approximately from one and a half to two and a half minutes
long and were presented on an audio CD player in short segments.

Furthermore, considering the authenticity mentioned above, Collins listening

for IELTS book, developed by Aish and Tomlinson (2011), and its recorded
listening texts were used in intervention sessions instead of recorded IELTS
listening texts. The reason to apply Collins listening for IELTS, instead of
recorded IELTS listening texts, in intervention sessions was avoiding teaching
to the test effect, or negative washback effect.

Reference

Dörnyei, Z., & Ushioda, E. (2011). Teaching and Researching Motivation.

Longman.

Adolphs, S., Clark, L., Dörnyei, Z., Glover, T., Henry, A., Muir, C., Sánchez-
Lozano, E., & Valstar, M. (2018). Digital innovations in L2 motivation:
Harnessing the power of the Ideal L2 Self. System, 78, 173–185.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2018.07.014

Wilson, J. J. (2008). How to Teach Listening (1st ed.). Longman.

Rost, M. (2015). Teaching and Researching Listening: Third Edition (Applied

Linguistics in Action) (1st ed.). Routledge.

Hymes, D. (1964). Introduction: Toward Ethnographies of Communication1.

American Anthropologist, 66(6_PART2), 1–34.
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2015.10.006

Bozorgian, H. (2015). Less-skilled learners benefit more from metacognitive

instruction to develop listening comprehension. 4(1), 3-12.
doi:10.5861/ijrsll.2014.748