Summary:
Listening comprehension is widely recognized as a cognitively demanding yet often underemphasized skill in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context, particularly in exam-oriented educational systems. Grounded in Anderson’s (1995) three-phase model of listening - perception, parsing, and utilization - this study investigates Vietnamese second-degree English-majored students’ perceived listening difficulties at the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (UEH). Data was collected from 41 participants using a structured questionnaire comprising 23 items aligned with the three cognitive phases. The findings indicate that participants reported experiencing moderate to high levels of difficulty across all phases. Perception related challenges, particularly those associated with fast speech and phonological discrimination, were reported most frequently. Perceived difficulties in the parsing phase were linked to unfamiliar topics and information load, while those in the utilization phase were associated with discourse-level comprehension, including identifying relationships among ideas and retrieving detailed information. These findings provide insight into learners’ subjective experiences and suggest that listening difficulties may be perceived at multiple stages of the comprehension process. However, given the reliance on self-reported data and the descriptive and exploratory nature of the study, the results should be interpreted with caution and not as direct evidence of actual cognitive processing or listening performance. The study contributes to understanding an underexplored group of adult EFL learners in the Vietnamese context and highlights the need for more process-oriented listening instruction.
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