Introduction

If there is one mantra I always repeat in every single CPD session of mine, it is that listening is the neglected skill. Many students find it opaque, many teachers often dread teaching it, and too many GCSE classes still treat it as a “test of memory under duress.” For several decades, strategy instruction has been hailed as the silver bullet—but is it?

Whilst research is now fairly consistent in evudencing that teaching learners how to plan, monitor, infer, and evaluate (PME) during listening tasks does improve comprehension, there’s an important catch—it only works if it is sustained over a long period of time), carefully structured, and balanced with language growth (i.e. the students have accrued a sizeable L2 vocabulary and substantive mastery of the L2 grammar). Below, I unpack what that actually means in practice.

Duration: the Long Game, Not the Quick Fix

One of the most common mistakes I have observed over the years in KS3 and KS4 classrooms is treating training in listening strategies as a one-off lesson or a half-term experiment. We know from studies such as Graham & Macaro (2008) that significant gains only show after a 10–12 week well-structured programme. By the same token, Liu, Zhang & Vandergrift’s (2024) meta-analysis showed that longer interventions inequivocably outperformed shorter ones – the effect sizes moving from “small” to “moderate-to-large” when the programme ran for a full term or more.

It is a bit like going to the gym: a few session won’t build much muscle. To embed metacognitive listening habits in the students’ modus operandi, students require repeated and sustained practice in the planning–monitoring–inferencing–evaluation ( PME) cycle until it becomes second nature.

Consistency: From Occasional Tips to Embedded Routines

Another common trap I have observed over the year is the “strategy tip of the week” approach—helpful reminders like “listen for cognates”, “skip what you don’t understand”, “search for key words”, etc. These are surface-level hints which may yield short-term gains, but not deep training which brings about durable change. What works is consistency: every listening lesson should include the same reflective prompts, nudging students through the process of predicting, checking, and evaluating. In my experience, this is rarely done. This consistency builds long-lasting metacognitive muscle. When students can anticipate the teacher asking “What did you predict you’d hear?” or “How did you verify that answer?”, then you know that they are beginning to internalise the target strategy sequence rather than seeing it as a bolt-on exercise of little consequence.

Structure: Scaffolding, Gradual Release, Feedback

In my experience, the most effective strategy training occurs when it is carefully thought out in terms of scaffolding. In the above-mentioned Graham & Macaro’s study, for instance, high-scaffold classes initially made greater progress: (1) first, the teachers modelled the steps ; (2) they then prompted the learners to articulate what they were doing; (3) they provided practice with the support of strategy lists; (4) finally, they provided feedback on both process and outcome. Later, a “low-scaffold” group which had not been initially supported and was consequently doing less well, caught up precisely because they were evebtually pushed to regulate themselves.

This suggests that effective instruction must start with heavy scaffolding but must gradually release responsibility in order to result in autonomous use. Without structure, weaker listeners flounder; without release, stronger listeners stagnate. The art is in balancing both.

The Graham & Macaro (2008) Programme: What It Was, and Where It Came From

This study is often cited by strategy training advocates but is less frequently explained. Hence, it may be worth pausing on the details of what it involved. Conducted with 107 lower-intermediate learners of French in English secondary schools, the programme lasted 10 weeks and involved a highly structured cycle of planning, monitoring, inferencing, verification, and evaluation.

• Foundation: the programme was based on work of Larry Vandergrift (1997, 2003), who developed the metacognitive sequence model for listening underlying the intervention, and on O’Malley & Chamot’s (1990) research into learning strategies.
• Two versions: One group received high-scaffold training, with the teachers explicitly modelling and guiding student reflection. Another group received low-scaffold training, with prompts but less teacher input.
• Findings: Both groups outperformed the control group, with statistically significant effects on listening comprehension at both immediate post-test and six months later. It is notable that self-efficacy in listening improved, and the delayed post-test showed that the “low-scaffold” group actually surpassed the high-scaffold group—suggesting that initial support followed by learner independence is key.

This study is one of the most credible classroom-based demonstrations that listening strategy training can work in real secondary school conditions, not just in small-scale experimental set-ups.

Vocabulary and Grammar: The Hidden Bottleneck

What the advocates of strategy training often neglect to point out is that it cannot compensate for students who simply do not recognise enough words, collocations, or grammatical cues. John Field (2008) and Vandergrift & Goh (2012) both emphasise that listening success is severely constrained by bottom-up decoding. At KS3 and KS4, this means that vocabulary teaching, phonics, and grammatical automatisation are not “add-ons” but essential prerequisites without which listening comprehension fails. Learners need sufficient lexical coverage (at least 95%) and enough grammatical familiarity to parse clause boundaries and verb endings in real time (2 seconds per sentence!). Otherwise, strategies risk becoming merely elaborate ways of guessing.

How Many Words Are Enough?

A key question is: how many words does a learner need to know before listening strategies can genuinely help?

Much research in L2 vocabulary suggests that 95% lexical coverage of a text is the minimum required for reasonable comprehension, with 98% coverage allowing for comfortable, confident understanding (Nation, 2006; Stæhr, 2009).

In practice, this means that learners need at least 2,000–3,000 high-frequency word families in the target language for strategy training to be truly beneficial. Below that threshold, the sheer density of unknown words makes it very arduous if not impossible to apply planning, monitoring and inferencing effectively—because there is simply too little known language to work with.

For KS3 and KS4 learners, this has two implications:

• Vocabulary building isn’t optional – it’s a must. Without it, strategy training collapses under the weight of unknown lexis.
• Strategy gains are enhanced by lexical development. The more words one knows, the more powerful strategies like inferencing or verification become.

In short: listening strategy training is no substitute for vocabulary knowledge; it is a way to leverage that knowledge more effectively.

So, When Does It Work?

Pulling the threads together, listening strategy instruction works best when:

• It lasts long enough (a term or more) to form habits.
• It is consistent across lessons, not sporadic.
• It is scaffolded, modelled, and then gradually released.
• It runs in tandem with vocabulary, phonics, and grammar growth.
• It is introduced once learners have a critical mass of high-frequency words.

In other words, strategy training is not a magic fix for listening difficulties; it is a multiplier. It amplifies what students can already do with their lexicon and grammar. It also builds confidence: learners report feeling less like “victims of the tape” and more like active problem-solvers.

Conclusion

As teachers, we owe it to our students to move listening beyond “press play and pray.” Strategy instruction is powerful, but only when is is carried out as part of interventions which are well-planned and highly scaffoled, not merely one-off sessions or sporadic reminders or tips . If we commit to that, we turn listening from the most feared skill into one of the most empowering.

References

• Graham, S. & Macaro, E. (2008). Strategy instruction in listening for lower-intermediate learners of French. Language Learning, 58(4), 747–783.
• Liu, Y., Zhang, J. & Vandergrift, L. (2024). A meta-analysis of listening strategy instruction effects. Language Teaching Research, advance online publication.
• O’Malley, J. M. & Chamot, A. U. (1990). Learning Strategies in Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: CUP.
• Vandergrift, L. (1997). The comprehension strategies of second language (French) listeners. Foreign Language Annals, 30(3), 387–409.
• Vandergrift, L. (2003). Orchestrating strategy use: Toward a model of the skilled second language listener. Language Learning, 53(3), 463–496.
• Vandergrift, L. & Goh, C. C. M. (2012). Teaching and Learning Second Language Listening: Metacognition in Action. New York: Routledge.
• Field, J. (2008). Listening in the Language Classroom. Cambridge: CUP.
• Nation, I. S. P. (2006). How large a vocabulary is needed for reading and listening? Canadian Modern Language Review, 63(1), 59–82.
• Stæhr, L. S. (2009). Vocabulary knowledge and advanced listening comprehension in English as a foreign language. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 31(4), 577–607.