Metacognitive Awareness of Listening Strategies among Science Pre-University Students

Listening is one of the fundamental skills to acquire knowledge in an academic setting. Employing appropriate listening strategies can improve focus and stimulate listening comprehension. Looking into the cognitive process from the perspective of metacognitive awareness during listening activity could enhance their performance in listening test. Despite that, listening skill in learning English as a second language (ESL) is often overlooked and the least practiced compared to other skills. There is a need to address the dearth of focus and research on approaching listening skills to improve the students' proficiency. The present study aims to investigate the relationship between Metacognitive Awareness of Listening Strategies (MALS) and listening achievement. To attain this, one hundred and sixty-nine science foundation students answered Metacognitive Awareness of Listening Questionnaire (MALQ) and took Malaysian University English Test (MUET). The result of the analysis shows that there was a significant relationship between students' MALS and listening performance. Subsequently, listening performance marks were found to be positively related to person knowledge strategies and inversely to mental translation strategies. Triangulation data was also done where 20 students were involved in further discussion of strategies that they have applied. The study also recommends looking into the practice of listening in Malaysia, particularly in pre-university level.