Learners' Level of Metacognitive Awareness and Its Relationship with Listening Performance

This article reports a survey study (N=1044) exploring the relationship between five metacognitive variables measured in Vandergrift et al. And the participants' listening performance on two listening tests. Results showed that Chinese undergraduates had a fairly high degree of metacognitive awareness of listening in directed attention, problem-solving, and planning and evaluation, but not in person knowledge factor and the mental translation strategy. Subsequent regression analyses indicated that around 13%-15% of the variance in listening performance could be explained by learners' metacognitive awareness in listening. The finding provided further evidence to the relationship between the reported metacognitive awareness in listening and learners' listening performance. Finally, the study identified a differing correlational pattern of MALQ variables concerning Chinese EFL learners, in which mental translation was positively correlated with person knowledge, and negatively correlated with planning/ evaluation and problem-solving. The negative correlations were not reported in previous studies. Theoretical and pedagogical implications of the study are discussed.