This article examines the theoretical underpinnings of English listening comprehension, focusing on cognitive, linguistic, and socio-interactive frameworks that explain how listeners process spoken language. Listening is a dynamic and multidimensional skill that requires simultaneous decoding of sound, interpretation of meaning, and integration of prior knowledge. The study discusses major theories such as the cognitive processing model, schema theory, psycholinguistic approaches, and socio-constructivist perspectives. These theories highlight that listening is not a passive reception of sounds but an active mental procedure involving prediction, hypothesis testing, monitoring, and meaning construction.

The article also explores linguistic factors including phonology, prosody, vocabulary knowledge, and syntactic awareness, all of which influence comprehension efficiency. In addition, it examines the role of working memory and attentional control, as well as the importance of interaction for negotiating meaning. The analysis shows that successful listening depends on the interplay between bottom-up decoding and top-down interpretation.

Listening comprehension; cognitive models; schema theory; psycholinguistics; top-down and bottom-up processing; working memory; socio-constructivism.

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