Abstract
Recent work in the field of listening indicates that listening comprehension is not a passive skill but an active one. To understand foreign utterances effectively, the listener should be mentally checking, supporting, challenging, and extrapolating the items of information contained in the discourse. Thus, listening is not a mere adjunct to speaking, but an independent skill that must be taught explicitly through well-planned teaching. In this study, an attempt was made to gain further understanding of the mechanism of listening comprehension. Data obtained from 62 Ss were used to examine the relationships between 6 measures of listening comprehension and 23 psychological variables thought to be relevant in listening comprehension situations. Results indicate that listening comprehension scores correlate positively with the measures of prediction, inference, note-taking, memory, construction, and discrimination. The data also suggest that training these abilities systematically in listening comprehension situations may have a beneficial effect on listening skill.
