Teaching Listening Comprehension Skills: A Test-orientated Approach

Attributed to a “receptive skill” in the communicative process, listening comprehension would be the most arduous task of all four language skills. It is likely that EFL (English as a foreign language) students encounter various predicaments, of e.g. grasping main ideas of the dialogues in contexts, and in turn suffer from learning anxiety. The issue of how to assist the students in improving their listening competency is worth attention. This article is, therefore, intended for illustrating a test-orientated approach to teaching listening comprehension skills to EFL students through an analysis of sample questions about listening comprehension (i.e. Choosing the Right Picture, Short Questions, and Short Conversations) on GEPT tests at the elementary level and through provision of tips (i.e. Skim, Scan, Listen, Guess/Infer, Choose & Write and Check) on how to answer the questions effectively. Implications for teaching listening comprehension are also made at the end of the paper.