EFL Saudi Undergraduate Students’ Use of Metacognitive Listening Strategies

Abstract

The main intent of the present study is to investigate the metacognitive listening strategies used by female Saudi students at the College of Languages & Translation (henceforth COLT) at King Saud University (henceforth KSU) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, when listening to texts in English. Two main research questions have been explored in the study: (1) Which of the five major types of metacognitive strategies do the participants use most when listening to English texts? and (2) What are the metacognitive listening strategies used most by the target group when listening to English texts? The Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire has been used to arrive at answers to the two research questions. Participants are 82 students from the same cohort. Results indicate that the participants (N=82) use problem-solving and directed attention strategies more commonly than the other metacognitive listening strategies; mental translation and person knowledge strategies are the least used by the participants.