Investigating the relationships between Chinese university EFL learners' metacognitive listening strategies and their comprehension and incidental vocabulary acquisition from listening tasks

Abstract

This article reports a study that aims to investigate (1) the effects of differential listening conditions on Chinese university EFL learners‘ comprehension and incidental vocabulary acquisition, and (2) the relationships between the learners‘ metacognitive listening awareness, listening comprehension, and incidental vocabulary acquisition. The participants were 172 Chinese university students who were put in four different listening conditions: a) listening one time, b) listening three times, c) schema-raising training before listening three times, and d) inferencing training before listening three times. The participants‘ listening comprehension was measured by their performance in the listening tasks. The listening text of each task included five words for incidental vocabulary acquisition study. To test the participants‘ vocabulary knowledge, three vocabulary tests, in the order of a production test (i.e., cued recall test), a form test, and a reception test, were administered separately to the participants right after the listening tasks as immediate post-tests, and the same tests were administered again one week after the immediate tests as delayed post-tests. The participants‘ metacognitive listening awareness was measured by means of Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ) in five aspects as: planning-evaluation, directed attention, person knowledge, mental translation, and problem solving. ANOVAs were employed to examine the effects of the different listening conditions on the participants‘ listening comprehension and incidental vocabulary acquisition. The results showed that all the three-time listening groups significantly outscored the one-time listening group in both comprehension and vocabulary acquisition, but no significant group differences were found among the three-time listening groups. The participants acquired some vocabulary knowledge especially in terms of receptive and form knowledge, and there was clear evidence that the participants were able to better recognize the target words overtime. Pearson Correlations were run to investigate the relationships between the ii participants‘ metacognitive listening awareness, listening comprehension, and incidental vocabulary acquisition. The results showed that the correlations were generally on the low side, and the relationship between reported use of metacognitive strategies, listening comprehension, and incidental vocabulary acquisition was most clearly evident in the three-time listening group which received no training. One of the implications of this study is that EFL learners, generally need time to process input for listening comprehension and incidental vocabulary acquisition. Regarding metacognitive strategy training, the implication is that it takes time for the learners to be able to implement the strategies instructed to them. Besides, pedagogical suggestion is made on the design features of listening texts for the purposes of both comprehension and vocabulary acquisition.