undertake practical activities which give them an interesting purpose for their listening;

listen to messages or narratives in order to predict at various stages likely outcomes and to locate with increasing accuracy genre, purposes and audience;

play listening games and other activities designed to develop skills in attention and recall and the identification of sounds;

use tape or video recorders to allow them to hear, watch and reflect upon what they themselves and their classmates have said;

listen to speakers who provide good examples of clarity and delivery in Standard English;

listen to speakers who provide good examples of clarity and delivery in using Scottish language features;

encounter a range of dialects and accents to enhance their linguistic competence and social confidence, making use of radio, television, film, audio and video tapes and song;

be given opportunities to associate listening with other forms of communication, such as body language, music, set and costume designs;

demonstrate a response to their listening in a variety of media - writing, pictures, graphics, speech, and performance;

acquire knowledge about language which will help them in their listening activities.

As pupils get older, contexts for listening will become more complex. There will be a corresponding need for listeners to be more aware of purposes and of the uses to which the listening is to be put. They will also be able to listen selectively at some times; pay close attention at other, more important times; adapt their mode of listening to their intention in listening; recognize the genre of the communication and be able to recall it. Assessment of listening should be varied. It would be wrong for a pupil's listening development to be stunted by asking for too much evidence of it as a written outcome when writing is still proving difficult.

The accompanying grid, which maps out content and teaching and learning approaches, has the following strands: listening for information, instructions and directions; listening in groups; listening in order to respond to texts; awareness of genre (type of text); and knowledge about language. Detailed accounts of each of these strands, developed as attainment targets, can be found in Section 2.