Larry Vandergrift (1999) emphasizes that listening is a complex, active process of interpretation in which listeners match what they hear with what they already know. Two distinct processes characterize listening comprehension. When learners rely on prior knowledge in order to understand the meaning of a message, they are using „top-down‟ processes. Prior knowledge includes the knowledge of the topic,familiarity with the discipline, awareness of the listening context, the text-type, the culture or other information held in long-term memory.