With a certain tone of concern, Suzanne Graham's article presents readers with a series of perceived problems related to current methods of teaching listening skills in the second language classroom. The general explanation behind these observations is the author's perception that language teachers’ practices do not ‘reflect current thinking from the research strategy literature’ (p. 108). Graham argues that research findings on the benefits of explicit strategy instruction are not being utilized in the classroom and that the research-based pedagogical approaches that are being used are often over-applied.

First, Graham explains that current methods focus more on ‘doing listening activities’ rather than ‘teaching them [students] how to listen’ (p. 110). She argues that in most lessons, the purpose is not to improve listening, but rather ‘preparing learners for assessments’ (p. 110), and that the explanation behind this focus is that teachers ‘lack the pedagogical knowledge’ to teach listening skills and rely too heavily on textbook materials (p. 110). From my experience, Graham's observations that the focus in the classroom, when it comes to listening, is often centered on doing listening activities is very convincing. During my two years of teaching university-level Spanish classes, the listening activities in the curriculum have come from the textbook and were mostly based on videos with accompanying, largely comprehension-based, activities. Outside of these few textbook exercises, no additional listening practice was included in the curriculum or the course schedule provided by my department. During my first year of teaching, this was the method that I used with my students for the listening component of the course, although I would have liked to have seen more opportunities in the curriculum set aside specifically for language practice with authentic listening tasks.

Graham also argues that ‘learners can and should be taught how to listen not just tested on their listening’ (p. 109). She suggests that a main element of teaching listening should include instruction on the ‘awareness and use of metacognitive strategies’ (p. 111). I had the opportunity in the Fall of 2018 to test this suggestion by carrying out a small action-research project with my beginner Spanish students at the university. The participants were 23 Spanish 101Footnote ¹ students and 22 Spanish 102Footnote ² students. I taught these first-year Spanish students a series of four listening units, each with a traditional lesson and a lesson with a focus on the application of metacognitive listening strategies, such as peer discussion and reflection, as suggested in Graham's article (p. 111). My students completed a pre- and post-questionnaire to identify any changes in their metacognitive knowledge and self-efficacy as listeners due to the strategy-focused listening instruction that they had received. They also took a comprehension quiz after each lesson (traditional or metacognitive strategy-based) so that I could compare the results after both types of lessons.

Based on my experience using the traditional approach to teaching listening that Graham opposes and my experience using the metacognitive strategies approach that she suggests, I mostly agree with Graham, but not entirely. I agree with her that explicitly teaching listening strategies can help students, who struggle with anxiety when listening in their second language, to manage those distracting emotions in order to improve their experience while listening. I concluded this by observing the results of a section of the pre- and post-questionnaire I used in my study, which was based on Graham's (Reference Graham2011) questionnaire to measure self-efficacy, which I gave to my students. The results showed a 16% average increase in levels of self-efficacy after receiving metacognitive strategy-based listening lessons compared to the levels recorded by the students before receiving these listening lessons. While this number isn't strikingly significant, the way that my students who had participated in the study behaved during their final listening exam at the end of the semester differed greatly from behavior that I had observed in previous semesters of teaching. For example, in contrast to previous groups of students, this group did not complain about the audios, and I observed visual evidence of strategy use, such as focused breathing and closing their eyes to help maintain focus and manage anxiety.

The emotional effect that strategy use had on my students was also the primary benefit that my students expressed to me in our discussions after they had received the metacognitive strategy-based lessons. However, the results on my students’ listening comprehension quizzes after receiving my metacognitive strategy-based lessons were not significantly different from the results that they achieved after receiving the traditional listening lessons, which included little more than comprehension activities and accompanying audios.

These results suggest an important issue that Graham does not address in her article. Graham suggests that ‘very little of the research regarding the teaching of listening has reached the foreign languages classroom in England, at least not in a positive way’ (p. 117). As a teacher who has intentionally done research on this topic, I can say that, while I have found a good amount of evidence-based research suggesting many benefits of strategy-based listening instruction, such as lowering anxiety levels, I have not come across a large body of evidence supporting the teaching of strategies as a way to improve listening comprehension. In fact, the evidence I've found on the effects that strategy instruction has on listening comprehension have had varied results. For example, two studies that tested the effects of strategy instruction on listening comprehension had different results. Graham and Macaro (Reference Graham and Macaro2008) reported an increase in students’ grades on a comprehension exam after receiving explicit strategy instruction, while a similar study by Cross (Reference Cross2010) found no significant effects, and Renandya (Reference Renandya2012) actually argues against the effectiveness of strategy instruction with certain types of learners. Without a strong body of research supporting the teaching of strategies as a way to improve listening comprehension, I can hardly imagine teachers – once aware of this apparent inconclusive evidence – making the decision to implement explicit strategy instruction in their listening lessons. Perhaps it's not so much a lack of attention to the research on the part of teachers, but rather, a lack of compelling evidence to support its positive effects on students’ ability to aurally comprehend the target language.

In my case, after reviewing the literature and trying metacognitive strategy focused lessons, in which I explicitly taught metacognitive strategies (e.g. planning strategies before listening, collaborating with peers during a listening activity, and reflecting on performance after listening) and implementing listening lessons that allowed my students to put these strategies into practice, as suggested, for example, by Vandergrift and Goh (Reference Vandergrift and Goh2012), I have reached the current position that, when it comes to teaching listening, the evidence to support the explicit teaching of strategies to improve listening comprehension in a second language, at least in the short-term, is still inconclusive (Graham & Macaro, Reference Graham and Macaro2008). Nevertheless, I am incorporating metacognitive strategy instruction into the traditional listening lessons that I am teaching this semester by setting aside time to brainstorm strategies as a class, help students plan which ones might help them, and then give them time after the lessons to reflect on what helped, what didn't, and what they might do differently the next time. My hope is that it helps them manage their anxiety in the short-term and helps them with their comprehension skills in the long-term. I do agree with Graham that including these strategic elements in a listening lesson eases my students’ levels of anxiety when listening, and that particular benefit of teaching listening strategies is backed by other investigations that I have recently come across, including one by Graham on the effects of this metacognitive strategy approach on students’ levels of self-efficacy (Graham, Reference Graham2011). Other examples are from Graham and Macaro (Reference Graham and Macaro2008) and Goh and Taib (Reference Goh and Taib2006).

Graham's second main argument is that the research-based pedagogical approaches that are implemented in a typical classroom are ‘over-applied’ (p. 113). For this argument, she primarily focuses on the use of prediction and pre-listening activities. Her concern with these activities is that ‘setting up of predictions is much more frequent than any checking of those predictions after listening’ (p. 114). Based on my experience teaching and on the pedagogy classes that I received in college, I do agree that prediction activities are greatly encouraged. However, her second argument does not apply to my experience. When I was taught to use prediction activities in my language teaching methods classes, the proposed activity included a follow-up discussion about the predictions to verify the answers with the students. I can remember a particular time in my class when I forgot to review the answers to the prediction activity and was quickly reminded by my students when I noticed them checking their answers with each other. It seems to me that checking the answers is a natural part of the activity, and I have not noticed it being commonly omitted in my own class or in shared lesson plans created by my colleagues. Perhaps what Graham was observing in her research was teachers with time restrictions that caused them to feel that they were unable to include prediction verification with their students. However, without verifying answers, the purpose of the activity is lost to students, and if the purpose is lost, in my experience, the students are also likely to lose their motivation to engage.

The last concern that I want to mention is the assertion that ‘learners find L2 listening difficult and it causes them anxiety’ (p. 114). She suggests that teachers focus on ‘giving learners the tools to cope with the problems they experience in listening’ (p. 114). I still remember from my first semester of teaching, the first time I administered a listening comprehension exam. The image of my students’ faces when I started the first audio was unforgettable. They immediately got nervous, they panicked, and they complained that the audios were too difficult. I was confused, and did not know what to do because the exam was created by the department and a requirement for the course. I administered the exam regardless, but it was one of the primary motivations that pushed me toward reading the type of research-based literature that Graham recommends.

I agree with Graham's claim that students find listening difficult and that, for some students, it causes great anxiety. My students have told me about their heightened nervousness before listening exams, and I would suggest that it comes from the lack of control that these types of exams bring. In my class, students do not have the opportunity to rewind and pause the audios, and they have a limited number of chances to listen and try to comprehend the information as they complete a listening exam or activity. They also do not have access to the audio before a listening exam, so they can't study for it the same way they can for their other exams. I also agree that teaching students a way to cope with these feelings should be an integral part of teaching listening. Graham states that ‘giving learners the tools with which to face any listening challenges they experience seems a more positive way to improve their motivation for language study’ (p. 115). I believe that teaching students strategies gives a sense of control back to them. It allows students to focus on what they can control, rather than what they cannot. In this sense, I agree with Graham, and I think that strategy instruction gives students some of the tools that they need to be successful, especially in regards to listening. This is the experience that I had with my students as a result of the metacognitive strategy focused listening lessons that I taught for my research and now plan to implement in my classes every semester. However, my thoughts are not only based on my own opinions. In the post questionnaire of my action-research project, 85% of my students reported that they felt more confident in their ability to understand the target language when they used metacognitive strategies.

With that said, it would be useful, perhaps, to see a future article focused on which methods of teaching listening actually demonstrate strong research-based evidence supporting significant positive effects on learners’ listening comprehension skills, rather than focusing on their levels of confidence and anxiety. I'd like to know how strategy instruction might improve students’ listening abilities in the target language on a cognitive level, rather than an emotional one, since improving their comprehension is the primary goal that I seek to achieve as a second language instructor in regards to listening, and I imagine that such a focus would be more likely to have an effect in actual classroom practice.