this thesis attempts to investigate the effects of prelistening activities on enhancing iranian efl learners` listening comprehension. the present study investigated ways in which learners` background knowledge could be activated in order to enhance their l2 listening comprehension by limiting the number of possible text interpretations prior to listening. the experiments conducted in this study examined the effect of prior knowledge and vocabulary teaching on iranian efl learners listening comprehension. the current study has two purposes: one is to investigate the effect of background knowledge on the second language listening comprehension of iranian intermediates and the other is to determine whether second language is facilitated by the introduction of unknown vocabularies in the form of prelistening activities. to conduct the study different instruments such as listening proficiency test and four listening tests such as pre and posttests were used and various statistical processes and techniques including paired-sample t-test, and analysis of variance (anova) were used. the findings of this study supported all three hypotheses tested. differences were found between the means of preteaching vocabulary variable, the background knowledge activation variable, and mean difference between these two strategies variable. subjects scored higher when the unknown words were taught in advance. likewise, subjects scored higher when they were asked some relevant questions about the topic than on those without them. there was, in addition, a significant difference between the means of preteaching vocabulary strategy and background knowledge activation strategy. in fact, preteaching vocabulary had a better effect in enhancing the students’ listening comprehension, in comparison to background knowledge activation strategy.