In this paper we focus on factors explaining variability in listening comprehension among adult Chinese learners of English. Although many studies have shown that vocabulary size is key to listening comprehension (e.g. Vandergrift & Baker, 2015; van Zeeland & Schmitt, 2013), few studies have analysed to what extent vocabulary knowledge explains variance in listening over and above phonological variables. The current study focuses on Chinese learners of English as it is likely that phonological variables are particularly important for this group of L2 learners because of the differences between Chinese and English phonology. 187 Chinese learners of English took part in the study. Listening comprehension was measured with the listening section of the Cambridge Preliminary English Test. An aural vocabulary task was used to measure learners’ vocabulary knowledge. A word recognition from speech task and a word segmentation task were adopted to measure learners’ phonological knowledge. Regression analyses show that vocabulary knowledge explained 22.5% of variance in listening when entered in a first step but did not explain any unique variance in listening when entered after the phonological variables, which explained 35.4% (and 12.8% of unique variance) in listening. Among the phonological variables word recognition was found to be the key variable explaining 29.9% of unique variance in listening. This shows that phonological variables are more important than vocabulary for Chinese L2 learners of English. Implications for models of listening and pedagogical practice and the development of listening test in the field of second language will be provided based on these findings. 

listening comprehension,,phonological variables,,vocabulary knowledge