EFL Learners’ Selective Listening Ability: Cocktail Party Effect

This study investigated a group of EFL learners’ selective listening ability. The cocktail party effect is the ability to focus on a particular auditory stimulus while filtering out other interfering stimuli. The premise is that selective attention is a capability that humans possess and utilize in their first language, which they may also be able to take advantage of in their second language. Thirty-six Iranian female EFL learners participated in the study. A listening comprehension test, developed to examine the selective listening ability, was administered to the participants. Their overall test performance revealed that they could successfully make use of their selective listening ability in their second language, English. However, statistical analysis showed that their performance significantly varied across the six subsets of the test; each of which was to examine a different aspect of cocktail party effect.