This study aimed to investigate the efficacy of metacognitive strategy instruction intervention on reducing language listening anxiety of Iranian EFL learners in the light of 2 listening metacognitive strategy instruction models of Integrated Experiential Learning Task (IELT) (Goh, 2010) and Metacognitive pedagogical Sequence (MPS) (Vandergrift, 2004). Participants were 63 B1 level learners who were chosen through random sampling and were randomly assigned to 2 experimental and 2 control groups. Before and after the intervention, Kim’s (2000) Foreign Language Listening Anxiety scale (FLLAS) and the listening section of Preliminary English Test (PET) were administered to all groups as pre and post tests. All four groups were taught by the same researcher and the listening comprehension material was constant over the groups. The first experimental group received IELT intervention, the second experimental group received MPS intervention, and both control groups received traditional product-based listening comprehension instruction while the active control group also received explicit instruction of the metacognitive strategies. ANCOVA results proved that although both IELT and MPS were effective in lowering anxiety level, the performance of MPS was of a large effect size, and it was a better model to lower learners’ anxiety. Both models significantly improved learners’ listening comprehension. Manuscript profile

This study investigated the differential effect of implicit/explicit metacognitive strategy instruction on the listening comprehension performance of Iranian EFL learners. It also explored the possible interaction of metacognitive strategy instruction with EFL learners’ working memory capacity. To achieve these objectives, 63 EFL learners were selected as participants based on their performance on a placement test and were randomly assigned to two experimental (implicit/explicit metacognitive strategy instruction) and two control (active and passive) groups. A task-based explicit metacognitive strategy instruction model was implemented in the explicit group. The implicit group received instruction based on a hybrid metacognitive strategy instruction model. All participants took the Automated Operation Span Test (AOST) as well as a PET listening paper. They also took the listening section of the FCE as their transfer test. The obtained results revealed that while both implicit and explicit metacognitive strategy instructions significantly affected the participants’ listening comprehension performance, explicit instruction was of greater effect. The results also showed that listening comprehension variations were not significant in the active control group, which indicated that no positive results can be achieved just by introducing strategies without contextualizing them in practice. Working memory capacity (WMC) also showed to be of significant predictive power for listening comprehension improvement in the explicit instruction group. Finally, the findings of the study demonstrated that implicit metacognitive strategy instruction works much better for learners with limited WMC or groups of learners with heterogeneous WMCs. Manuscript profile