| ISSN: 2583-4371 | ISSN: 2583-4371JOURNAL ARTICLE
Keywords: listening comprehension, EFL, Moroccan high school, cognitive processing, perception, parsing, utilisation, metacognitive awareness
Abstract: This study explores the cognitive nature of listening comprehension problems among Moroccan high-school learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). Drawing upon Anderson’s (1995) three-phase model of comprehension—perception, parsing, and utilisation—and following the introspective procedures established by Goh (2000), the research investigates the real-time processing difficulties experienced by learners when engaging with spoken English. Data were collected from eighty second-year Baccalaureate students in three public high schools in Kénitra through listening diaries, small-group interviews, and immediate retrospective verbalisations conducted after classroom listening tasks. The findings reveal ten recurring problems distributed across the three phases of processing. At the perceptual level, learners frequently failed to recognise familiar words in speech, missed the beginnings of utterances, and reported lapses of attention due to fast delivery and accent variation. At the parsing level, difficulties emerged in holding sequences of information, forming coherent mental representations, and integrating new input with previously heard material. At the utilisation level, students struggled to infer the speaker’s intended meaning, apply background knowledge appropriately, and maintain comprehension when confronted with unfamiliar cultural content. These results point to significant constraints in learners’ cognitive processing capacity, particularly short-term memory and automatic lexical access. The study concludes that effective listening instruction in Moroccan EFL classrooms must move beyond comprehension testing toward metacognitive training that enhances attention control, word-recognition fluency, and inferential reasoning. Pedagogical recommendations include systematic awareness-raising of listening processes, explicit strategy instruction, and increased exposure to authentic speech under supportive conditions.
Article Info: Received: 25 Sep 2025, Received in revised form: 27 Oct 2025, Accepted: 02 Nov 2025, Available online: 06 Nov 2025
DOI: 10.22161/ijtle.4.6.1
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