The importance of listening in language learning was brought into attention when Gary (1975) stated that focusing on listening comprehension, especially in the early phases of second language learning/ teaching, creates four different types of advantages: cognitive, efficiency, utility, and affective. The cognitive advantage of an initial exposure to listening gives learners a more natural way to learn the language. Listening should be stressed before speaking because recognition knowledge is required to process and decode the aural input, whereas retrieval knowledge is required to encode and generate speech. Concentrating on speaking in initial stages leaves little room for listening, and hence little room for comprehension