Active Listening: Building Skills for Understanding is a low-intermediate to intermediate listening text with 20 engaging, task-based units, each built around a topic, function, or grammatical theme. Students are taught how to listen through a careful balance of activities including global listening, listening for details, and making inferences. This unique text draws on recent "schema theory" research in reading and applies it to listening. By "activating" students' knowledge of a topic before they listen, the text gives them a frame of reference to make intelligent predictions about what they will hear. Each unit includes: The book is accompanied by 2 cassettes. An interleaved teacher's manual supports teachers of varied backgrounds by providing detailed suggestions and a range of optional activities.