Metacognitive Awareness of Listening Strategies in Second and Third Language: The Role of Language Proficiency Across and Within Languages

ABSTRACT

Metacognitive awareness of listening strategies has a supporting role in explaining L2 listening comprehension. Although metacognitive awareness is language-independent, language proficiency may determine whether learners can utilize such a cognitive resource during multiple language development. The current study explores the listening strategy awareness in the L2 and L3 through a 21-item questionnaire (i.e., Metacognitive Awareness of Listening Strategies Questionnaire, the MALQ), and its relationship with L3 listening comprehension. Data from 48 high L2 English proficiency students learning L3 Italian in Turkey indicate an overall higher awareness in L2 English. The reported awareness in the L2 and L3 strategies significantly differ in person knowledge and mental translation, but not in problem-solving, planning and evaluation, and directed attention. Beginner and intermediate L3 Italian learners do not differ in their metacognitive awareness in the L3 while only the L3 (but not L2) overall MALQ score significantly predicts L3 listening comprehension beyond L3 proficiency. These differing L2-L3 relationships across the MALQ subcomponents are discussed for language dependency in metacognitive awareness of listening strategies for multilingual language learners.

Acknowledgements

This study has been conducted as part of an MA thesis study which was financially supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (Türkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Araştırma Kurumu-TÜBİTAK) under 2210-A scholarship program for domestic MA studies. We would like to thank Italian language instructor, Ivana Viappiani, and the participants for their time. We also thank the anonymous reviewers and the editorial team of International Journal of Listening for their invaluable feedback on this manuscript. The findings of this study have been presented at the British Association for Applied Linguistics Conference 2021 as an oral presentation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki/1.%20View%20the%20Badges/.

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data, Open Materials and Preregistered. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki/1.%20View%20the%20Badges/.

Notes

¹ The terms monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual can have different definitions in academic accounts. In this study, the definition is based on the number of languages participants use. In a detailed account of multilingualism, Kemp (2009) defines multilinguals as individuals “able to use three or more languages either separately or in various degrees of code-mixing” while bilinguals are individuals using two languages (p. 15). This study focuses on individuals using (at different proficiency levels) two foreign languages, thus referred to as multilinguals..

² A priori power analysis computed using GPower 3.0 program (Faul et al., 2007) with power (1 - β) set at 0.80 and α = 05, two-tailed, indicated that the required sample size to detect a medium effect is 269.

³ Post-hoc power analyses calculated using GPower 3.0 program (Faul et al., 2007) indicated that the achieved power at a small to medium effect size is .73, .06, .25 for PS, DA, and PE respectively in the differences observed in the current sample..

⁴ The MALQ strategies indicated in parentheses refer to which MALQ strategy the item belongs to and are provided only in this appendix for the readers’ information.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Turkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Arastirma Kurumu [2210-A Scholarship Program].