The Teaching of Listening Arif Saricoban Hacettepe University (Beytepe-Ankara, Turkey) arifs [at] hun. edu. tr Listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying. This involves understanding a speaker's accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning (Howatt and Dakin). An able listener is capable of doing these four things simultaneously. Willis (1981:134) lists a series of micro-skills of listening, which she calls enabling skills . They are: predicting what people are going to talk about guessing at unknown words or phrases without panic using one's own knowledge of the subject to help one understand identifying relevant points; rejecting irrelevant information retaining relevant points (note-taking, summarizing) recognizing discourse markers, e. g. , Well; Oh, another thing is; Now, finally; etc. recognizing cohesive devices, e. g. , such as and which , including linking words, pronouns, reference