Research on listening skills has received more and more attention in second language acquisition in recent years． This paper reviews the  key  research  studies  of  second  language  listening  conducted  by  western  researchers  during  the  past  few years and summarizes the widely recognized key issues as well as future research directions．        It aims to provide some reference for teachers  and other relevant researchers working in the field of English language teaching and teaching Chinese to speakers of other languages．