Listening for gist involves general thematic understanding, without any focus on specific details or discrete information. It is one among many types of listening and aims to answer primary questions related to an aural text's central theme, topic, and purpose.
Listening for the main idea – Students listen to identify the overall ideas expressed in the whole recording. Listening for details – Students listen for groups of words and phrases at sentence level. Listening for specific information – Students listen for particular information at word level.
