Metacognitive listening strategies in second language acquisition comprehension

¶ … Second Language Acquisition

Metacognitive Listening Strategies

The objective of this work is to answer the question of whether metacognitive learning strategies assist in the SLA of listening comprehension. Metacognitive listening strategies have been a source of recent discussion, although this has been historically noted there is a large gap in the research that focuses on the success of language learners in employing strategical metacognitive listening to second language learning comprehension. This work notes the work of Vandergrift et al. (2006) in their development of the 'Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire' as well as other primary researchers in this field of study including that of Cohen and Macaro (2007, as well as others.

LISTENING STRATEGIES and SECOND LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION

The work of Karen a. Carrier entitled: "Improving High School English Language Learners' Second Language Listening through Strategy Instruction" reports a study in which the theoretical framework was based on "cognitive theory and strategy research." (Carrier,

Carrier states that this theory supports the idea that the learner is "actively involved in the learning process." (2003) Strategies are one of the ways "learners become actively involved in controlling their own learning..." (Carrier, 2003) Strategies are the "...thoughts and behaviors that learners use to help them comprehend, learn, or retain information." (Carrier, 2003) Carrier relates that the work of Pressley, Forrest-Pressley, Elliot-Faust and Miller (1985) linked strategies to cognitive processes and "define strategies as 'composed of cognitive operations over and above the processes that are a natural consequence of carrying out a task...Strategies are used to achieve cognitive purposes and are potentially conscious and controllable activities." (Carrier, 2003) in other words, the learner that is an active learner makes a conscious choice to utilize strategies in order to better their performance of a task. Listening is a critical aspect of the second language learning process and has further been defined as "an active process during which the listener constructs meaning from oral input." (Carrier, 2003) Carrier additionally states of metacognitive knowledge that it is "...understanding when and where to apply strategies and the gains produced by strategies when used" and cites the work of McCormick & Pressley (1997).

The work of Vandergrift entitled: "Facilitating Second Language Listening Comprehension: Acquiring Successful Strategies" states that listening comprehension 'is anything but a passive activity' indeed, according to Vandergrift, it is a "complex, active process in which the listener must discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and grammatical structure, interpret stress and intonation, retain what was gathered in all of the above, and interpret it within the immediate as well as the larger sociocultural context of the utterance." (1999) the coordination of all of this in inclusive of mental activity to a great extent on the listener's part. Since listening is hard work, Vandergrift stated that it "deserves more analysis and support." (1999) Vandergrift states that learning comprehension."..as a separate and important component of language learning only came into focus after significant debate about its validity." Vandergrift notes the work of Gary (1975) who, in relation to area learning "provides advantages of four different types:

1) Cognitive;

2) Efficiency;

3) Utility; and 4) Affective. (1999)

Stated as the cognitive advantage of first emphasizing comprehension via listening is stated to be "its respect for a more natural way to learn a language. To place speaking before listening, as advocated by the audio-lingual method is to 'put the cart before the horse." (Vandergrift, 1999) the processing and decoding of input that is auditory in nature makes a requirement of recognition knowledge however, encoding and speech generation output makes a requirement of retrieval knowledge.

Cognitive overload occurs from requiring that learners "produce what is not yet assimilated in long-term memory..." explaining why it is that when students initially begin language learning difficulty is experienced in "listening for accurate meaning and learning to produce correct sounds at the same time." (Vandergrift, 1999) Short-term memory is not capable of keeping all of this information and the concentration applied to speaking does not leave very much room for listening and even less for comprehension of what is being heard. Vandergrift states that the efficiency advantage is closely related to the cognitive advantage and states that language learning "can be more efficient if learners are not immediately required to produce all the language material to which they are exposed." (1999)

The usefulness of the receptive skills or what is termed the "utility advantage" is related by Vandergrift who states that research has demonstrated that adults spend approximately one-half of their time in communication listening, twenty-five to thirty percent speaking, only eleven to sixteen percent reading and only nine percent in writing. Vandergrift states that it only follows that language learners "will make greater use of comprehension skills." (1999) the final advantage stated by Vandergrift related to the emphasis on listening comprehension is that of the "psychological advantage." (1999) Upon having eliminated this factor and removal of the factor of early oral production in the form of pressure and resulting in potential embarrassment it is possible for the learners to "relax and focus on developing the listening skills, and on internalizing the rules which will facilitate the emergence of the other skills. Moreover, listening comprehension results in earlier achievement and a sense of success." (Vandergrift, 1999) Listening comprehension is stated to result in "earlier achievement and a sense of success." (Vandergrift, 1999)

Vandergrift states that it is important to develop prelistening strategies and specifically stated is that "the pedagogical sequence of pre-listening, listening and post-listening activities is not new. However, if used consistently, this sequence of teaching strategies can guide students through the mental processes for successful listening comprehension and promote the acquisition of metacognitive strategies in three categories:

1) Planning;

2) Monitoring; and 3) Evaluating. (Vandergrift, 1999)

Vandergrift relates that during the listening activity students need to continually evaluate what they are making comprehension of for:

1) Consistency with their predictions; and 2) Internal consistency or the ongoing interpretation of the oral text or interaction. (Vandergrift, 1999)

Teacher intervention during this phase is stated by Vandergrift to be "virtually impossible, because of the ephemeral nature of listening." (1999) in summary, Vandergrift states that placing an emphasis on listening comprehension along with applying listening strategies will assist students in capitalizing on the language input they are receiving and for the students to have a greater level of success in learning a second language.

III. LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGIES

The work of Andrew Cohen and Ernesto Macaro entitled: "Language Leaner Strategies: Thirty Years of Research and Practice" relates that the importance of listening to the foreign language that one is learning and even teaching is evidenced in a 30-year "shift toward interaction-based acquisition." (2007) Cohen and Macaro states that the preferred method of eliciting from learners the strategy used when listening have been 'think-aloud protocols'. (2007) Several various techniques have been utilized within the general method of 'think-aloud'. These authors state that some limitations have been reported by investigators in relation to 'think aloud' protocols during listening as follows:

1) Only conscious strategies can be reported;

2) Verbalization needs to take place as soon as possible after the event to limit forgetting;

3) the phase of the task will influence the type of strategy reported as will the difficulty of the task;

4) Researcher 'prompting' may affect elicitation; and 5) Triangulation methods (such as combining think-aloud with retrospective interviews) might provide more reliable data. (Cohen and Macaro, 2007)

In relation to use of strategy and the relationship that strategy has with other variables, Cohen and Macaro (2007) state that the relationship between variables that has garnered the most attention is that existing "between strategy use and successful listening comprehension." This is held by these authors to not be surprising in that "strategy use and successful performance is one of the main claims made by strategy theorists." (Cohen and Macaro, 2007)

This type of research is the investigation of 'successful listeners' versus 'unsuccessful listeners'. Measure of successful listening has been approached in various ways. Differences in strategy use by listening success is stated by Cohen and Macaro to have been reported in the work of Goh (1998) in which sixteen students were selected from a group of 80 to form two separate groups:

1) Higher listening ability; and 2) Lower listening ability.

Goh states findings that lower ability listeners "failed to use certain strategies that higher ability listeners did use successfully" as follows:

1) Contextualization: placing a key word in a familiar context to understand it, or relating an item to something from an earlier part of the passage;

2) Real-time assessment of input: assessing how important a word or phrase is to the understanding of the passage;

3) Comprehension evaluation: determining the accuracy and completeness of comprehension. (Cohen and Macaro, 2007)

This last strategy is quite different form 'comprehension monitoring' in that comprehension monitoring "takes place almost at the same time as listening, 'comprehension evaluation' seems to take place after listening and when some kind of interpretation has been made." (Cohen and Macaro, 2007)

Cohen and Macaro states that one of the only studies to control for lexical and vocabulary knowledge in examination of different levels of listening comprehension success was the work of Chien and Wei (1998) in a study which found "significant differences in strategy use both in terms of quantity and type, in relation to degree of listening success." (Cohen and Macaro, 2007) There was however stated to be some evidence that "students at the same level of grammar and vocabulary did not necessarily perform as well in their listening comprehension.' (Chien and Wei, 1998, as cited in Cohen and Macaro, 2007) This was attributed to strategies such as "listening out for single words, translating into L1 and relying on vocabulary lists." (Cohen and Macaro, 2007) Other studies have filed to control for linguistic knowledge and for general proficiency. It is related by Cohen and Macaro that the relationship between variables has been explored between the awareness of strategies by the learner, the learner's deployment of strategies and the beliefs of the learner about listening. Vogely (1995) found, in an investigation of perceptions of university students about what constitutes a good listening and the comparison of this to the reported strategies used that characteristics of a good listener include the following:

1) Understanding gist;

2) Using background knowledge;

3) Vocabulary knowledge;

4) Word recognition;

5) Continuing listening when problems occurred; and 6) Using the next segment to understand the previous one. (as cited in Cohen and Macaro, 2007)

Vogely however, is stated to have "noticed a discrepancy between what the students believed and the strategies that they actually used." (Cohen and Macaro, 2007) Cohen and Macaro state that regardless of the problems that methodologically exist across the studies in this area of research, researcher have made identification of specific strategies which are "common to more proficient listeners" and these include:

1) Cognitive strategies (listening to chunks of language rather than focusing on individual words; and 2) Avoiding direct translation.

However, it is stated to be "the employment of metacognitive strategies..." that determines the successful or lack of success in the language learner's listening comprehension success. The importance of metacognition is also stated to emerge as "...the employment of metacognitive strategies, especially those involving comprehension monitoring." (Cohen and Macaro, 2007)

The work of Neil D. Anderson on L2 Learning Strategies relates that L2 strategies have been supported in the research of Hsiao and Oxford (2002) as being that which may be classified in a "systematic manner." (Anderson, 2005) Language learning strategies have been classified, according to Anderson as follows:

1) cognitive strategies (identifying, retaining and storing learning material including retrieval, rehearsal, and comprehension);

2) metacognitive strategies (preparing and planning, identifying, monitoring, orchestrating and evaluating strategy use;

3) mnemonic or memory related-strategies (memorization);

4) compensatory strategies (circumlocution strategies such as using a world you do know to describe the meaning of a word or phrase you do not know;

5) affective strategies (strategies for reducing anxiety);

6) social (self-encouragement, relaxation, and meditation, eliminating negative influences, creating positive strategies). (Anderson, 2005)

Anderson relates that there is some "overlap between affective strategies and motivating strategies." (Anderson, 2005)

The work of Fang Lv (2005) entitled: "Research into Effects of Fostering Metacognition Awareness upon the Listening Comprehension" relates an investigation of the effect of "fostering metacognition awareness upon listening comprehension on a passage level among college students of science and engineering" for the purpose of:

1) detecting ways to increase listener's metacognition awareness; and 2) finding out the correlation between listeners' metacognitive awareness and their listening proficiency." (Lv, 2005)

The work of Cheng-Yi Kelly Chang entitled: "Intuitive-Analysis and EFL Listening Strategies" (2005) reports the investigation of the relationship between learning styles and listening strategies using revised version of the Cognition Style Index and the Strategy Inventory of Learning Strategies. The data were reported to be collected from 98 EFL learners using self-report questionnaires." Chang states of learning styles that they are "...considered to be innate to individuals, they certainly affect their learning processes, including learning a second language. There may also be a significant difference in the strategies used by effective and ineffective EFL learners (. Effective EFL learners, generally speaking, use more listening strategies than do ineffective EFL learners." (2005)

SUMMARY & CONCLUSION

This work stated an objective of answering the question of whether metacognitive learning strategies assist in the second language acquisition of listening comprehension. This work has reviewed several research studies and a compilation of studies of over thirty years of research in the work of Cohen and Macaro. Indeed, metacognitive listening strategies have been shown in research to effectively, efficiently, enhance the second language acquisition of individuals who use the metacognitive listening strategy in learning a second language. The work of Vandergrift has been reviewed who notes that there are four different learning types including cognitive learning. Vandergrift has informed this study that the cognitive advantage of first emphasizing comprehension via listening is 'its respect for a more natural way to learn a language. To place speaking before listening..." is the same as putting the 'car before the horse." (Vandergrift, 1999) When learners are pressured to produce what they have not yet assimilated in their long-term memory the result is what is termed 'cognitive overload'. Vandergrift et al. (2006) report the development of the "Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire" and state that the evidence found in their study made the questionnaire development possible as the awareness of the second language learner's as well as the 'perceived use of listening strategies' was revealed. (Vandergrift, et al., 2006) the work of Cohen and Macaro report the work of Vogely (1995) who found while researching the perceptions of university students as to what constitutes a good listener that the following characteristics were attributed to a good listener; (1) understanding the 'gist' of what is being said; (2) use of background knowledge; (3) vocabulary knowledge; (4) word recognition; (4) continuing listening when problems with comprehension occurred; and (5) using the following segment to understand the previous segment when listening. It is certain that metacognitive listening enables the learner to more quickly and successfully learn a second language.