Metacognitive monitoring plays an important role in self- regulated learning. Accurate metacognitive monitoring facilitates effective control, which affects learning outcomes. Most studies that explore metacognitive monitoring have investigated learners’ monitoring abilities when learners are explicitly cued to monitor. However, in real-world educational settings, learners are more commonly cued to control their learning. The primary goal of the current study was to investigate whether learners monitor their learning processes using retrieval when explicitly cued to control. Two experiments were conducted in pursuit of this goal. In the experiments, participants were instructed to learn Swahili-English word-pairs. Their learning performance was tested in subsequent cued-recall tests. Results suggest retrieval is likely practiced when learners are explicitly cued to control, but at a lower frequency or a more shallow level than when learners are explicitly cued to retrieve. In addition, the current study reported attempts to measure retrieval-based metacognitive monitoring using objective and online methods.