Nevertheless, any listener can learn to focus on significant content items, to explain in another way he can learn to listen selectively. Helping the learners to distinguish sounds, teaching to isolate significant content and informational items for concentration may be provided by controlled listening exercises. One exercise is to give him certain performance objectives -to give him general informational questions that he should be able to answer after he listens the material for the first time. These questions should require only the isolation of facts clearly revealed in the material. Questions that require application or inference from the information contained in the listening exercise are best used at later stages or more advanced students.
More controls are necessary at less advanced levels.
Such questions help him filter out and listen for significant information. The questions themselves suggest the content and provide the student with an organizational frame for selective listening. For listening comprehension exercises, we tend to read passages, record news or broadcasts, or prepare lectures. All of them have value, but they are extremely difficult sources for early practice in selective listening. This type of listening exercises does not present the redundancies, the colloquialisms, the hesitations, the gestures and the facial expressions that are an inseparable part of the spoken language.