抄録
Listening anxiety is known as an affective factor influencing the second/foreign language listening comprehension process. However, the construct has been examined and discussed as unique to each individual learner and more or less a static learner attribute, which makes it rather difficult to examine the real-time effects of listening anxiety on cognitive processing in second/foreign language listening. The present study introduces "listening stress" as an alternative to listening anxiety and examines its debilitating effects, focusing on the use of coping strategies. A small-scale stress-inducing experiment was conducted with 9 Japanese learners of English. The results show that increased listening stress hinders the use of coping strategies, debilitating listening comprehension, especially in higher cognitive processing, such as inferencing and generalization/application of information. For future research, both quantitative and qualitative analyses of data obtained from more subjects, more control of factors within subjects, and further refinement of the instrumentation were considered to be necessary.
