While academic procrastination has been widely studied, little attention has been given to its occurrence in specific domains such as English listening, which requires sustained cognitive focus and emotional regulation. Moreover, despite growing recognition of the benefits of mindfulness for learners’ emotional and motivational functioning, limited research has explored how mindfulness may mitigate listening procrastination through affective and motivational pathways. This study aimed to examine how mindfulness relates to listening procrastination among Chinese EFL college learners, with English listening anxiety and intrinsic motivation considered as potential mediating factors. A total of 394 EFL students from several universities in China were conveniently selected and administered self-report questionnaires. These participants were undergraduate English majors receiving systematic training in core language skills. Structural equation modeling and mediation analyses were employed to evaluate the proposed relationships. The results indicated that higher degrees of mindfulness and intrinsic motivation were tied to lower levels of listening procrastination and listening anxiety. Conversely, English listening anxiety was positively correlated with listening procrastination. Furthermore, mindfulness positively predicted intrinsic motivation while inversely predicting listening anxiety. The findings demonstrated that both English listening anxiety and intrinsic motivation significantly mediated the relationship between mindfulness and listening procrastination. The implications of these findings are discussed, along with recommendations for future research in this area.
Jingyi Cai (2026) studied this question.