Listening is probably the most important of the four skills: it's the starting point for learning any living language, and most people spend more time listening – including listening during conversation – than they do speaking, reading or writing.

• 56 Give topic and task in advance

• 57 Don't always pre-teach vocabulary

• 58 Don't use written texts

• 59 Let students see the speaker

• 60 Divide the text into short bits

• 61 Use dictations

56 Give topic and task in advance

Just asking students to ‘listen and understand’ is a bad idea. It's quite frustrating and uncomfortable to try to understand something without any previous idea of its context and what it's going to be about. The listener has to try to work out who is talking and in what situation, as well as trying to grasp the meanings, with no advance clue. This is a complex set of tasks which we almost never face in real life. Think of any situation where you had to listen and understand recently: in most cases you’ll have known in advance who would be talking, what the situation was and the sort of things you were likely to hear. Even in a phone conversation, the speakers normally identify themselves and the caller says why they are calling before starting the conversation. So on both counts – making understanding easier for the student, and preparation for real-life listening situations – it makes sense to provide this information before students start listening.

Similarly, we normally have a purpose in understanding what the speaker is saying (again, think of a listening situation you’ve encountered recently). In the classroom, this purpose is supplied by the listening task. So don't tell students to listen and then afterwards face them with comprehension questions: give the comprehension task in advance. If it's questions, then give students time to read these before listening (and sometimes it's a nice idea to encourage them to guess what the answers are going to be – they can always correct themselves later).