Identifying Metacognitive Listening Comprehension Strategies of Saudi ESP Students

This research aims to find out the metacognitive listening comprehension strategies (MLCS) of 320 (178 males and 142 females) Saudi English for Specific Purposes (ESP) students using the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ) in a Preparatory Year Deanship. The descriptive statistical analysis of the data showed that participants employed problem-solving, directed attention, and person knowledge more (higher-moderately) than planning and evaluation and mental translation (lower-moderately). For females, the dominant set was problem-solving, and for male participants, it was the directed attention sub-scale. The least preferred group by both genders was mental translation. On the independent samples t-test, there was no statistically significant difference between the means of sub- scales and the overall means of male and female ESP learners (except for mental translation). It implies that both sexes were not much different in using the MLCS while listening to ESP texts. They approximately used the strategies equally. Recommendations were made for students, instructors, and syllabus designers to integrate explicit metacognitive instructions for preparing, planning, managing, monitoring, assessing, and reflecting on ESP listening activities.