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Abstract: The article investigates the process of listening comprehension in consecutive interpretation. The paper contains a working definition of a speech activity unit in consecutive one-way interpretation as a two-component complex formation, consisting of semantic verbal realization based on analytic activity and a communicative speech act with the text of the utterance. The authors describe the place and function of listening comprehension in interpretation and reveal the specific features of the process of verbal semantic text perception, both in the native and foreign languages, in consecutive interpretation. Then, they suggested their own vision of listening comprehension in interpretation as a highly intellectual process involving the creation of semantic content program of the oral text by the interpreter. The analyzed process of perception, comprehension and understanding of information and then generation of the secondary text is illustrated by examples. Special attention is paid to the specific characteristics of listening comprehension in interpretation: a complete fragment of discourse as an object of perception; completeness and depth of perception, comprehension and understanding of the oral text; high thinking activity; presence and account of all verbal and non-verbal components of discourse; mechanism of switching from one language to another; bilingualism; synchronization of several kinds of speech activity; and close connection of listening comprehension and speech in consecutive interpretation.