Abstract: As the word “metacognition” becomes one of the hottest words in language learning, more and more researches find out that metacognition plays a critical role in successful learning. Metacognition enables students to be successful learners. Therefore, it is important to know how metacognition affects listening ability and how one can be trained to enhance listening comprehension. The essay attempts to find out the relationship between metacognition and listening ability; to prove strategy training as an effective way to enhance listening comprehension; and to put forward some suggestions to help students overcome listening obstacles. The first part deals with a survey involving the second-year English majors of the university, to find out the answers to the following questions: (1) Can the training of metacognitive strategies improve the students’ listening comprehension? (2) Can the training of metacognitive strategies enhance the students’ awareness? (3) Does the training of metacognitive strategies have the same effect on successful listeners and unsuccessful listeners? The second part offers some suggestions on training of metacognitive strategy i.e. on how to improve listening ability as English majors.
Key Words: metacognitive strategies；listening comprehension；English majors
