摘要：There are many interesting areas of investigation in the psychology of second language acquisition (SLA). One of these interesting areas is study of the psycholinguistic processes and perspectives relevant to reading and listening comprehension. Comprehension of any given text or speech, in SLA, is based on much more than simple decoding. Familiarity with cultural nuance, structure of the language, vocabulary development, background knowledge about the setting and/or topic, and attitude toward the text are some of the most common factors involved in the process of comprehension by English learners. Listening and reading have many things in common. Both listening and reading are a form of language comprehension in which one is trying to get some meaning from the language. Understanding how comprehension works can have huge implications in language pedagogy, testing and research. So, this paper aims at providing a general overview about reading and listening comprehension in SLA, based on the literature review. In this regard, first a brief introduction to SLA Psycholinguistic theories and their pros and cons is presented. Later, the study is narrowed down to the very processes involved in comprehension of reading and listening, in particular. At the end, a short discussion about the brain’s language areas active in the process of comprehension is ensued.
