Top-down listening uses background knowledge such as context, situation, topic, and information presented before and after to understand the meaning of a message. Top-down listening activities include putting pictures or events in order, listening to conversations to identify locations, reading about a topic then listening to find if points are mentioned, and inferring relationships between people. Successful listening relies on combining top-down processing, which uses background knowledge, with bottom-up processing, which focuses on individual sounds and words, to become effective listeners.