Investigation into, and re-conceptualisation of, second language learners' metacognitive awareness and activity in the listening process
Abstract
In recent years, there has been a growing body of literature investigating metacognition in
second language (L2) listening (e.g. Cross, 2010; Vandergrift & Goh, 2012; Vandergrift &
Tafaghodtari, 2010). The theoretical underpinning of the majority of these studies is that
metacognition and listening are individual psychological processes. This led to a limited
understanding of metacognition in listening that highlights the regulation of oneself, whilst
disregarding the communication partner and the wider context. The present study
contributed to the existing body of literature by investigating and re-conceptualising
metacognition in L2 listening. Informed by a sociocultural and dialogical perspective on
discourse and thought, this thesis offered new insights that recognise L2 listeners’
metacognitive awareness and activities as reciprocal monitoring and control processes.
International students for whom English was a second/foreign language participated in the
study. They worked in pairs on a collaborative problem-solving task and their interactions
on this task were video-recorded. Directly after the task, individual interviews with each
member of the pair were conducted to gain their accounts of how they perceived the task
and how they monitored and regulated the interaction. A grounded theory informed
approach was used to analyse the interview data, and a conversation analysis informed
approach was used to analyse the interaction data.
The findings of this study have established that a wider view of metacognition in L2
listening is required. The re-conceptualisation, underpinned by existing theories and
deriving from the study’s empirical data, moved beyond conventional views of
metacognition, and argued that the monitoring and control processes in listening are
dialogical and reciprocal. This re-conceptualisation was encapsulated in the term
Metacognitive Discourse Awareness (MDA). The central tenet of the MDA framework is that
metacognition in listening involves the complex regulation of the discourse, thought and
social-affective dimensions. This multidimensional framing of MDA entails the listener’s
awareness of his/herself as the co-regulator of the other(s) in the reciprocal relationship in
which meaning is socially co-constructed and negotiated.
This study thus foregrounded the situatedness of the monitoring and control processes in L2
listening and the connections within, between and across the thought, discourse and social-affective
dimensions. The thesis concluded with recommendations for L2 teachers and
learners to develop a broader understanding of metacognition in the listening process so
that this understanding can have an impact on practices in the increasingly diverse global
higher education context.