"Listening Strategies" in: The tesol encyclopedia of English Language Teaching

 Making the Case
The four types of listening strategies, namely cognitive, metacognitive, social, and 
affective strategies, serve different aspects of comprehension achievement. This 
understanding is based on both scholarly discussion of, and research efforts into, 
listening instruction and practice.
Cognitive strategies, which make use of learners’ knowledge in processing 
text meaning, provide greater depth of interaction with the text, including the 
ability to ignore irrelevant information. Compared with metacognitive strate-
gies, however, these skill types are considered less efficient as they involve lower 
processing practices such as translation, repetition, and summary. Within this 
awareness, there has been an appeal for more research into the relationship 
between learner knowledge and mental translation (Vandergrift, Goh, Mareschal, 
& Tafaghodtari, 2006).
Metacognitive strategies, which are considered the most reliable predictors of 
listening skills development in metacognition, denote the ability to reflect on and 
control one’s own learning. Recent research into metacognition has provided evi-
dence that effective listening performance can happen through classroom instruc-
tion to assist learners’ mental process in coping with listening materials (Rost & 
Ross, 1991). Researchers also discover that successful learning comes from the 
ability to combine different strategies to meet various tasks and situations (Rahimi 
& Katal, 2012) and that more skilled learners tend to apply these types of skills 
intensively, especially monitoring comprehension through evaluating information 
and questioning for clarification (Alavinia & Mollahossein, 2012).
Social strategies and affective strategies are closely connected and thus often 
discussed together. This is because individual feelings and social relationships 
are mutually connected parts of the L2 learning process. Empirical studies on 
these types are less frequent compared with that on cognitive and metacognitive 
strategies. Research on socioaffective ability shows that the lack of social 
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Listening Strategies
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sympathy in the classroom often intimidates learners from asking questions 
during the listening process (Serri, Boroujeni, & Hesabi, 2012). It also shows that 
socioaffective strategies can help learners stay motivated and well‐focused, as 
well as control emotion, communicate with peers, and get help from them 
(McCombs, 1982, 1988). Studies on metacognitive instruction have confirmed 
positive values in the effect of visuals (Kim, 2004), the use of videotexts (Gruba, 
2006), and the role of technology in learners’ ability to mediate listening scripts 
(Robin, 2007).
Overall, research on listening strategy instruction clearly indicates that such 
training often leads to positive results in improving comprehensibility (see, for 
example, Rost & Ross, 1991). A study on students’ learning improvement based on 
strategy training (O’Malley & Chamot, 1990) adds more nuance to the above 
understanding by showing that such training only works if a text is not too diffi-
cult and students have some prior knowledge of the listening content. Another 
project by Ozeki (2000) contributes a good idea to strategy instruction by high-
lighting the need to identify students’ existing listening strategy use knowledge 
prior to the training plan. Other studies have proven the value of modeling, peer 
discussion, selective attention, anticipation, and note‐taking in improving learn-
ers’ comprehension (Vandergrift, 2003). Other areas of attention comprise oppor-
tunities to explore various strategies and genres, providing timely feedback, being 
goal‐oriented during practice, developing self‐regulated strategies without dis-
traction, understanding context‐specific strategies (Goh & Taib, 2006), participat-
ing in real‐life communication (Jou, 2010), developing a performance checklist, as 
well as focusing both on the process and product of listening (Vandergrift, 1999). 
The social climate of the classroom also plays a role in training learners with listen-
ing motivation, efficiency, and autonomy.
The main weakness of many studies on listening strategies is their short‐ 
duration design as well as the absence of follow‐up research. Areas for further 
research include studies on the long‐term effect of students’ exposure to strategy‐
practice activities, learners’ ability to reflect on and improve strategy use, second 
language beginners’ learning pace with the support of strategy training. Besides, 
until recently there have been few studies focusing on the training of language‐
learning strategies in classroom settings (Chamot, 2005). There is also a lack of 
research investigating the development and change of listening strategy use in 
the absence of explicit strategy training. Such areas are vital for the planning of 
listening strategy instruction and for the teaching of listening in the second 
language curriculum.