The goal of the present study was to investigate the instructional potential of metacognitive strategies to improve listening comprehension and the automaticity of listening processes. A pretest-treatment-posttest design was adopted and used in seven sections of second-semester French. Differences were found based on initial listening proficiency and metacognitive awareness: low proficiency learners in both conditions outperformed all high-proficiency learners in listening gains over time. Initial level of metacognitive awareness had a significant impact on gains in listening performance: learners in the experimental group who began the study with low metacognitive awareness achieved higher gains in listening. These results indicate that the initial level of metacognitive awareness has a differential impact on listening comprehension gains, supporting the idea that increasing metacognition can help learners to improve listening skills.