The present study investigated the extent to which four pre-listening activities, "pre-teaching vocabulary", "content discussion", "pre-reading questions" and "topic discussion," assisted EFL learners with their performance on listening comprehension tests across two different proficiency groups (elementary and advanced). Both proficiency groups were divided into four experimental groups, and each was assigned one of the pre-listening activities. The findings revealed that in elementary level, vocabulary preparation and pre-reading questions groups respectively outperformed the two other groups, while in advanced level, vocabulary preparation and content discussion groups respectively outperformed the two other groups. Therefore, vocabulary knowledge should be emphasized more strongly in pre-listening activities.