Pre-Listening
A well-designed listening activity should be broken down into carefully sequenced "phases" that build on each other. The initial pre-listening phase should prepare students by helping them activate their background knowledge and clarify their expectations and assumptions about the text. An ideal pre-listening task is one in which the teacher, through carefully constructed questions, helps the students to activate the background information and language components needed to comprehend the text without "giving" this information to the students.
Question: What do we mean by pre-listening? What are the goals of this phase of the listening activity?
Question: How much information should the teacher provide during pre-listening?
Question: How important is it to provide students with a list of vocabulary included in the passage before listening or to provide them with a transcription of the text to which they've listened?
As in reading and as in any sport, a successful listening activity will very much depend on the initial "warm up" and "stretching" students do during pre-listening.