Why has teaching listening been neglected so far?

The reasons for neglecting this vital skill are various.
oTeachers felt that it was more important to present new language items to the class. They
used listening only to practice those items.
oThey focused on emphasizing those skills that enabled more systematic instruction and
evaluation like grammar, reading and writing.
oListening has been viewed as a passive skill.
o It is a difficult skill to teach and not possible to assess listening comprehension which takesplace in some hidden recesses of the listener’s mind. The outcome of listening is not
tangible like writing or speaking.
o Often after a lot of listening practice there is no perceptible improvement which is
frustrating for the teacher.
o Teachers believe that listening activities take up a lot of teaching- learning time and may
require technical equipment.
o Some believe that this skill will be automatically picked up through exposure to the target language. It can be acquired naturally in response to the spoken word as with L1. (Ignou,The People’s University, p. 6)