Abstract
The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship, considering their lecture comprehension ability, between Japanese EFL learners’ use of academic listening strategies, and cognitive load in order to identify the way they self-manage their perceived cognitive load while attending English-medium lectures. A total of 12 participants performed an English-medium lecture comprehension task and took a stimulated recall interview to examine their academic listening strategy use. Their perceived cognitive load was quantitatively assessed through a questionnaire survey. The results demonstrated that the perception of extraneous load prevented the use of metacognitive strategies, especially selective attention strategies. In addition, the perceived extraneous load increased the number of cognitive strategies the participants used, especially top-down strategies. The study also found that learners' academic listening strategy use depended more on lecture comprehension ability than on their perceived cognitive load. The learners with higher comprehension ability tended to predict content before and while listening, while those with lower ability tended to rely on bottom-up strategies, especially reconstructing the missed parts by relying on words and phrases that could be decoded.
