Abstract
The current study, which follows an earlier study on bilinguals (Miura, submitted), attempts to explore individual differences among L2 learners in the experimental notion of the 'sustainability of listening comprehension (SLC)' that describes the ability of bilinguals to sustain their listening comprehension when they need to switch between the two languages and inhibit an interfering option. A new experimental paradigm where L2 learners listen to two languages binaurally and what they hear are semantically re/unrelated, called a 'bilingual dichotic listening task,' was developed and administered to investigate the SLC with regard to working memory capacity (WMC), L2 proficiency, age of acquisition, length of learning, and amount of exposure to each language. The findings of twenty-five participants demonstrated that comprehension in both languages was sustained without being interfered with by the semantic relatedness and the language to ignore. Significant causal relationships with the SLC were found between L2 proficiency and the amount of listening, but not between WMC. These results would indicate requirements for L2 learners to sustain listening comprehension.
