The background of the study in this research was based on the phenomena that students in SMP N 31 Semarang usually got bored to learn listening because in the learning process. The teacher still focused on the old learning model: the students just listen to the cassettes and answer the teacher’s question. The objective of this study is to explain the effectiveness of using top-down strategy to improve listening skill of descriptive texts for the ninth grade of SMPN 31 Semarang in the academic year of 2017/2018. The method of this research was an experimental study. The subjects of this research were the ninth grade students of SMPN 31 Semarang. The research methodology was an experimental research that conducted in two classes; the experimental class (IX D) and the control class (IX A) as samples. The IX D was taught by using top-down and the IX A was taught without top-down (just conventional teaching). The instruments used to collect the data were documentation and test. The try-out test had been tried out to find out the validity, reliability, difficulty level, and discriminating power before it was used to gather the data. After tried out the try-out test, the pre-test and post-test were conducted. The formula used to analyze the data was t-test. It was used to determine the significant difference between students’ scores in experimental class and students’ scores in control class. After the data had been collected by using test, it was found that the pre-test average of the experimental group was 60.17 and the control group was 58.83. The post-test average of the experimental group was 78.00 and the post-test of the control group was 66.50. The post-test showed that the average of the experimental class was higher than the control class (78.0 > 66.5). The obtained t-test was 5.008 while the t-table was 1.67 for alpha () 5%. The t-test score was higher than t-table (5.008 > 1.67). It was meant that Ha was accepted while Ho was rejected. Since t-test score was higher than the t-table, top-down strategy was effective in improving student’s listening skill of descriptive texts SMPN 31 Semarang in the academic year of 2017/ 2018. Finally the researcher suggests to the teachers that they should use top-down as one of strategy in teaching listening of descriptive texts.