ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on principles of developing listening ability. It begins by formulating what listening ability is, based on aspects of listening performance. In sum, the potential danger of any skill taxonomy in language education is that it may be interpreted as suggesting a 'product syllabus'. The development of listening ability involves the balanced enactment of linguistic, ideational, and interpersonal domains of language. The formal instruction in listening should aim both to present learners with increasingly challenging listening texts and pedagogic tasks and to induce the learner to resolve points of non-understanding and misunderstanding. Conscious strategies to bring more of a language event into focus are the means by which listeners maximize their performance. Authenticity is a characteristic of the relationship between the text and the reader/listener and has to do with appropriate response.
