Learner’s Cognitive Strategies in Interpreting Implied Meaning in an English Listening Course among University Students
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.59923/joinme.v4i2.971Keywords:
Cognitive Strategies, Implied Meaning, Listening Comprehension, Phenomenology, PsycholinguisticsAbstract
Understanding what speakers imply rather than state is a persistent difficulty for EFL university students in listening, yet little is known about how learners themselves experience and resolve such meaning. Most existing studies measure strategy use and listening performance quantitatively, and few connect pragmatic theories of implied meaning with cognitive strategy frameworks at the level of learners' lived experience. This study aims to explore EFL university students' experiences in interpreting implied meaning (e.g., idioms, sarcasm, and indirect remarks) in an English listening course from the perspective of cognitive strategies, and how they perceive barriers and strategies to combine when they resolve such meaning. Using a qualitative phenomenological design, six students at an Indonesian university were selected purposively and interviewed through asynchronous semi-structured WhatsApp voice notes, and the data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Participants perceived vocabulary, speech rate, and accent as barriers that preceded difficulty with implied meaning; they relied on inferencing, tone of voice, and context to resolve ambiguity, combined keyword focus, prediction, and imagery, and used translation according to their confidence in processing English directly. The novelty of this study lies in integrating Gricean implicature with O'Malley and Chamot's cognitive strategy taxonomy into a three-stage account of implied-meaning interpretation: decoding under load, gap detection, and strategy deployment. The study concludes that implied meaning should be taught as an explicit component of listening instruction.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Christina Vinky Ananda Revani, Maria Teodora Ping, Kurniawan Suryatama, Yuni Utami Asih, Ida Wardani
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