the relationship between listening proficiency and metacognitive listening strategies awareness among low and highly self-regulated learners

the main purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between listening proficiency and metacognitive listening strategies awareness among low, mid, and highly self-regulated students. three hundred and seventy one efl students participated in this study (all grade 3 and 4 high-school students who were studying in khansar in academic year 1391-92). to gather the data, three instruments including preliminary english test (pet) (listening part), metacognitive awareness listening questionnaire (malq), and academic self-regulation questionnaire (asrq) were used. the data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics (correlation analysis and multiple regression). the results revealed that, when the whole sample was considered, there was a significant relationship between listening proficiency and one type of metacognitive strategies, that is problem-solving (r=.170, p<.01). while listening proficiency was not related to either malq or its subsections among highly self-regulated learners, it was related to one type of metacognitive strategies, mental translation strategies (r=.198, p<.05), among low self-regulated learners. further listening proficiency was found to be related to malq (r=.272, p<.01) and its three subsections, namely planning-evaluation (r=.259, p<.01), directed attention (r=.197, p<.05), and problem solving (r=.322, p<.01) among mid self-regulated learners. in addition, regression analysis demonstrated that problem solving strategies could predict more than 10% of the variance of listening proficiency among mid self-regulated learners. the findings of the study has certain implications for teachers, policy makers and the ministry of education to provide opportunities for implementing language learning strategies in efl classes.