The thesis centres around an experiment sequence on English speech perception and comprehension of Hungarian secondary school students. In second language teaching the focus is generally on speech production while speech perception gets much lower attention in spite of the fact that it is equally important. Using Listening to English test package, speech perception and comprehension results of students belonging to different age groups from 15 to 19 were compared. The experiment was carried out in two different grammar schools in Szombathely, Western part of Hungary. In several points contrary to the expectations it turned out that speech comprehension precedes speech perception, however in some other cases the expectations were confirmed. At the end of the thesis the possible factors responsible for the results are listed.