We examined the effect of cultural familiarity and question-preview types on the listening comprehension of L2 learners. The results showed that the participants who received the full question-preview format scored higher than those receiving either the answer-option preview or question-stem preview, despite a statistically nonsignificant difference across the three previewing activities. In addition, the participants exposed to diverse cultural texts did not perform differently in their comprehension score. The findings suggest that the use of visual cues and key-vocabulary instruction in both texts may have compromised the positive psychological value of question previewing in enhancing comprehension of the unfamiliar text.