Active Listening: Building Skills for Understanding is the middle level of the Active Listening series, a three-level listening course in North American English that draws on recent research in comprehension. This low-intermediate to intermediate text offers 20 engaging, task-based units, each built around a topic, function, or grammatical theme. Active Listening activates students' knowledge of a topic before they listen, giving them a frame of reference to make predictions about what they will hear. Students learn to listen through a careful balance of activities including listening for gist, listening for specific information, and making inferences.