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—    referring expressiońsi iHteachers ask students to focus on them while they listen,

—    static or dynamie relationships - to clarify them teachers could give a set of pictures, from which students are to choose the accurate ones for the examples given,

-rr- speed - students need to locate specific information, concentrate on part of a text,

vocabulary - teacher has to decide (in advance) if the Iow freąuency vocabulary is important or not; if it is not important it should be ignored, if it is important it should be pre-taught or paraphrased in the task,

—    discourse structure — teachers give students some information which they need to recognise,

—    contextual support - teachers must give students some context for the task to be completed successfully,

—    genre - listeners only need to focus on important things.

Ali these task factors correspond to text factors described earlier on and so they should be considered while choosing a text.

12.1.2.3. Learner factors

Looking at the list belo w, the reader will clearly see that the factors enumerated affect leamers’ comprehension and/or interest:

—    teachers have to create a motivating task, the same text can be madę both very interesting and very boring by a task,

—    teachers must give reasons for doing something and explain the tasks carefully,

m*- if leamers are not used to some kind of activity it is morę difficult for them, it is much easier if they possess the necessary language skills and strategies to carry out the task,

—- the pace is important, if it is too fast the text should be broken down into manageable parts,

—    if the task assumes cultural knowledge that the students do not have, they will find it very difficult to do the task well,

W- learners should be confident with listening,

—    linguistic knowledge assumed or reąuired by the task should not exceed students’ level of that kind of knowledge.

12.1.3. How to make listening easier

There are a number of things that the teacher can do to facilitate students’ comprehension. In generał terms, they could be specified as the following:

—    make listening easier,

—    make listening a learning experience,

—    make listening realistie,

—    make listening useful (are students learning something new?)

In morę specific terms, the teacher might resort to the following activities (based on Gough:1993):

1.    give effective pre-listening activities; these should:

-    pre-teach or elicit from students important vocabulary,

-    provide a cońtext, so that students have expectations about the content and discourse structure,

-    create interest in the text - a reason for listening,

-    be leamer-centred,

2.    ensure that students understand the task before they listen, in order to achieve that, teachers can give them time to read the task, give them examples, ask for ąuestions,

3.    reduce memory load - students should be able to do the listening task while they listen,

4.    ensure that the listening task focuses on important, meaningful information in the text, rather than on difficult vocabulary and grammar,

5.    try to make the task as realistie and/or useful as possible -students should be able to understand why they are doing it,

6.    set the task that should guide students towards understanding, rather than trying to trick them; the task can reąuire understanding of the main points only, clarify the order of events, give vocabulary for recognition, suggest the opinions of speakers, etc., (please, bear in mind that recognition is much easier than reconstruction),

7.    play the recording morę than once to compensate for the lack of visual clues; teachers ought not to play it too often however, so that students practise understanding under time constraints and disregarding irrelevant information,