A study examined effects of short-term study abroad programs on second language listening comprehension skills. Participants were undergraduate students enrolled in an intermediate Spanish course, 92 of whom took the course on campus and 48 of whom took the course as part of a study abroad program. Results revealed that the two student groups experienced similar gains in listening comprehension. However, results showed significant differences in approaches to listening tasks, with the on-campus group favoring bottom-up processing and the study abroad group mainly using top-down and social listening strategies. Further results are presented, and suggestions for future research are provided.