This paper examined how metacognitive scaffolding techniques influenced EFL learners' listening-related anxiety and their active participation. From the original pool of 80 students, 60 male EFL learners from the ages of 16 to 25 were selected. The EFL learners were drawn from the Kish and Pardis language institutes from Hamadan, Iran. Initially, all participants achieved homogeneity via the Oxford Placement Test. Following this, the 60 EFL students were randomly allocated to either an experimental group or a control group, with the latter receiving conventional instruction lacking specific strategic teaching. To assess the intervention's impact, both the Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scale and the Student Engagement Questionnaire were administered as pre- and post-tests. Subsequent analysis using independent samples t-tests revealed that participants in the experimental group experienced a statistically significant reduction in listening anxiety and a notable improvement in behavioral engagement when compared to their counterparts in the control group. Incorporating metacognitive scaffolding strategies can have implications for teacher's instruction, course designers', and material developers' practices, to help address learner's affective and behavioral issue while providing evidence for the importance of listening instruction in EFL contexts.