Effective Learning Tasks and Activities to Improve EFL Listening Comprehension

Listening comprehension is an integrative and creative process of interaction through which listeners receive speakers' production of linguistic or non-linguistic knowledge. Compared with reading comprehension, it may arouse difficulties and thus impose more burdens on foreign learners. The Audio-Lingual Method focused primarily on speaking. Mimicry, repetition, rote memory, and transformation drills actually interfered with listening comprehension. So learners lost interest and were not highly motivated. Improving listening comprehension requires continual attentiveness and interest. Listening skill can be extended systematically only when students are frequently exposed to a wide range of listening materials with an affective, cultural, social, and psycholinguistic approach. Therefore, teachers should help students learn how to comprehend intactly the overall meaning of intended messages. The literature on teaching listening skill suggests various useful activities: TPR, dictation, role playing, singing, picture recognition, completion, prediction, seeking specific information, summarizing, labeling, humor, jokes, cartoons, media, and so on. Practical classroom teaching necessitates a systematic procedure in which students should take part in meaningful tasks/activities. In addition to this, learners must practice listening comprehension trough a self-study process.