The Use of Metacognitive Strategies by ESL Tertiary Learners in Learning IELTS Listening Course

Listening, in general, is a challenging language skill for many learners in which they usually face frustration (Arnold, 2000; Goh, 2000). The emphasis of this study is to identify the experiences of ESL learners when learning the listening skill for IELTS while applying metacognitive strategies in learning. The research instrument used in the present study is the semi-structured interviews with the aim of gaining foundational understanding from the selected respondents regarding their use of metacognitive strategies in learning the listening skills for the IELTS examination. The qualitative results of this study were based on interviews conducted among 10 participants who are undergraduate students, underwent an intervention programme which was designed for them to acquire the listening skills using the metacognitive strategies. The semi-structured interviews were recorded and transcribed for analysis by using the coding method. Findings of this study suggest that metacognitive strategies presents a viable solution for acquiring appropriate skills in the listening component because although most individuals of normal intelligence engage in metacognitive regulation when confronted with an effortful cognitive task, some are more metacognitive than others. Those with greater metacognitive abilities tend to be more successful in their cognitive endeavours. Additionally, it was also found to have positively impacted learning behaviours with the learners being receptive to the changes and gaining more confidence with independently learning. There is a vast potential that can still be evaluated for the application of metacognitive strategies with other level of learners for acquiring appropriate listening skills in the English language.