Construct the listening activity around a contextualized task.
contextualized listening activities approximate real-life tasks and give the listener an idea of the type of information to expect and what to do with it in advance of the actual listening. A beginning level task would be locating places on a map (one way) or exchanging name and address information (two way). At an intermediate level students could follow directions for assembling something (one way)
or work in pairs to create a story to tell to the rest of the class (two way).