Sabrina's e-portfolio

Goh, C.,& Taib, Y. (2006). Metacognitive instruction in listening for young learners. ELT Journal, 60(3), 222-232

    The article describes how the process-based activities are used to elicit the primary school pupils’ metacognitive knowledge in listening. Metacognition involves some elements such as person knowledge, task knowledge and strategy knowledge. It also contains sequence of activities to engage students in planning, monitoring and evaluating some strategies that are developed to complete the listening tasks. There are three stages of conducting process-based listening. The first stage is to think aloud what they have already known about the topics. It could activate students’ background knowledge to help their listening comprehension. The second stage is individual reflection regarding mental process of listening. The last part is students’ self-report and group discussion about their use of various strategies to cope with listening tasks. Through metacognitive instruction, students’ anxiety could be reduced and self confidence would be promoted. However, more self-introspection and teachers’ modeling are recommended to benefit those young learners.

    According to my role as an English learner or an English teacher, listening is not taught explicitly by teachers in junior and senior high schools. Generally speaking, teachers just train students’ listening ability by giving lots of input and asking them to do listening tests without providing some useful skills or strategies for students to follow. Thus, students have no ideas about how to master the content to catch the main gist. To help students with listening difficulties, teachers can lead students to do pre-listening, listening and post-listening activities. For example, in pre-listening phase, teachers could introduce some relevant background of the topic to have them prepared. In listening phase, teachers could provide top-down and bottom-up strategies like take notes to help them deal with the content. Different kinds of listening would focus on various aspects so it is important for students to learn how to get main points efficiently and pay attention to specific information at the same time. It really takes time to practice such skills. In post-listening phase, students can discuss and share their own reflection with others. By examining their process of listening activities, students may find and employ a suitable way to improve listening ability.