Effects of Teacher-led Think-aloud Instruction on L2 Listening Comprehension

In this mixed-methods research study, 13 middle school students did activities to enhance their second language listening comprehension. The students were shown a video from This is Language and were given questions to answer that pertained to the video. Their ability to comprehend the video was measured based on how they answered the questions. They used two methods while doing the activities; partner work, and the Think-aloud method. After doing the activities, students were interviewed to see what they thought about the two methods and how metacognitive awareness came into play. According to Vandergrift & Tafaghodtari (2010), metacognitive awareness is necessary to successfully use the Think-aloud method. Looking at the listening comprehension questions and the interviews, there seems to be an improvement in listening comprehension when using the Think-aloud method, however the students did not seem to be aware that it helped. Further research on metacognitive awareness might be necessary to better explain these results