This study aimed to illustrate what information Japanese language learners pay attention to during a listening exercise. We analyzed eye movement to identify the information that Chinese students learning Japanese pay attention to when listening to text. The results showed that the detailed-information instruction group had a longer reading time and a highertotal and keyword fixations than the entire-information instruction group. The participants under detail-information instruction paid more attention to words and phrases with a bottomup strategy during the listening exercise. In contrast, those in the entire-information instruction group paid little attention to detail, skipped through the text and utilized a top-down strategy during the exercise. In conclusion, the results of the experiment indicate that selective attention methods diff er according to listening consciousness.