Skills building 1: listening for the gist
To listen for the gist or general idea of a passage, you need to find out how many people there are, where they are, what they are doing and what they are talking about. You need only focus on the specific required information. If you hear a word you don’t understand, do not stop to think about what it means----keep listening. Remember that you are listening for the gist, not the details.
1. You have conversations with your friends, your relatives and other people every day. What decides the topic you are talking about? Will the topic be different if someone else joins your conversation? Will the topic be different if you move to another place to talk? Will it be different if you are doing something else while you are talking? Think about the past experience. To quickly understand what others are talking about and get involved in a new conversation, what do you usually listen to or pay attention to? Now let’s have a free group discussion. Then each group will report the result to the whole class.
2. Let’s read the four points in Skills building 1 on page 52. Please focus on what to find out about while listening for the general idea. Try to understand the instructions here. Listen to the tape and complete the note sheet. After we check the answers, I’d like all of you to think about your answers and the previous discussion. I
