Over the years, EFL teachers have often neglected teaching listening as they felt it was a skill that could only be acquired; not taught. More recently, teachers understand that listening comprehension is crucial to language skill development and have aimed to help learners transfer their L1 listening skills to their L2. As such, they have focused on teaching the subskills of listening to help learners process information for gist, specific information and/or detail. To develop these subskills students often passively listen to recorded material on cds, tapes, or video.
Though the aforementioned strategies may help students to manage certain listening challenges, they still treat students as passive over-hearers of language. This material may be formal or informal, conversational or academic, but still doesn’t change the relationship the learner has with the listening. We are not passive over-hearers in most listening contexts but are active participants. Most listening occurs in the course of conversation. Each participant in a conversation switches roles and becomes alternatively speaker and listener. Students must be taught to be active participants in the listening process rather than passive over-hearers.
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