Listening to Lectures - Note-taking

Why take notes?

How do I take notes?

How do I know what is important and what is not?

How do I write my notes?

When should I write up my notes?

Suggested Answers

Reference

This module should be done together with the module Listening to Lectures - Study Skills & Vocabulary.

Why take notes?

The purpose of taking notes during a lecture is to help you to concentrate on what the speaker is saying and to provide you with a summary in note form so that you can write up your notes in full later. Also, it may be that the notes provided by the lecturer are not sufficient - the lecturer may add new information during the lecture and your own notes will be needed to provide you with a complete record of the lecture. Taking your own notes will promote a deeper understanding of the content of the lecture.

How do I take notes?

The general principle in note-taking is to reduce the language by shortening words and sentences. The following advice will help you to take notes efficiently, leaving you free to listen to your lecturer. Remember that these notes are for you and as such you can use any method you like, so long as it enables you to reproduce the ideas contained in the notes and show how these ideas connect to each other later. However, there are certain principles you should bear in mind and certain conventions that are commonly used which you may find useful. First of all, you must be able to determine what you need to write down, what is important to you.

How do I know what is important and what is not?

This is not an easy question to answer, but there are things you can look out for.

The first piece of information you receive is the title of the lecture. This is perhaps the most important single piece of information of the whole lecture, so you should make sure that you write it down in full. Even better - find out what it is beforehand so that you can have time to think about what the lecture will be about.

Secondly, listen for direct or indirect signals from the lecturer that tell you what is important, for example, he/she may say, "This is important, write it down," or "Make sure you get this down." Or, he/she may make indirect signals such as pausing before saying something important, or saying it slowly, loudly or with greater stress. Listen for repetition. When the lecturer repeats a point, go back to your first notes and add in any new details or information.

• Try to determine the lecturer's style or organisation of speaking - revise your note-taking accordingly.

• Concentrate on the important words - listen for the words, called content words (usually nouns; sometimes verbs, adjectives or adverbs) that give the important information.

• Omit unimportant words - such words are called form words and do not always have meanings in themselves, such as auxiliary verbs (e.g., be, have, do); determiners(e.g., a, the, some); pronouns (I, he, they, there, it, this, that, which, whom, etc); and prepositions (at, on, in, etc.).

Task 1

Below is the opening paragraph of a lecture on reading skills. Read it and underline the most important words. You should consider whether or not the whole meaning of the paragraph could be understood just from the words you have underlined:

When a teacher or lecturer recommends a student to read a book it's usually for a particular purpose. The book may contain useful information about the topic being studied or it may be invaluable for the ideas or views that it puts forward, and so on. In may cases, the teacher doesn't suggest that the whole book should be read. In fact, he may just refer to a few pages which have a direct bearing on the matter being discussed.

 

How do I write my notes?

As mentioned above, you can make notes in any way that you like, but the following guidelines will help you to develop a style that is both quick and accurate.

• Concentrate on the important ideas - avoid repetition and omit things that do not need to be stated specifically because only you yourself will be reading the notes and you will know what they are referring to.

• Summarise important ideas - you can use words that are not used by the lecturer to restate in a shorter form what he/she is saying.

• Write in short phrases rather than in complete sentences.

Example: The paragraph from Task 1 could be written in note form like this:

Lecturer/teacher recommends book for particular purpose. Not whole book, just few pages.

Task 2

Now read the second paragraph of the lecture and write it down in note form:

Unfortunately, when many students pick up a book to read they tend to have no particular purpose in mind other than simply to 'read the book'. Often they open the book and start reading, page by page, line by line, word by word; in other words, slowly and in great detail. The result is that students frequently don't have an overall view of what they're reading; also, they tend to forget fairly soon what they've been reading.

• Use symbols or signs - some examples of these are:

	therefore		because
	the statement is correct	X	the statement is wrong

Task 3

Below are some more symbols that are commonly used in note-taking. Match the symbol on the left with the explanation on the right. Discuss your ideas with a partner.

(1) ?	(a) dash (join ideas/replace missing punctuation.
(2) /	(b) or
(3) & or +	(c) ditto (means the same as the words above)
(4) -	(d) leads to/results in/causes
(5) " "	(e) fall/decrease
(6) =	(f) and/plus
(7)	(g) does not equal, is the opposite of
(8)	(h) greater than, more than
(9) >	(i) is/are/have/has/equals
(10)	(j) is the statement correct?

Task 4

Do you know (or use) any other symbols or signs? Add them to the list.

• Use abbreviations - there are many abbreviations and a good dictionary will contain a list of some. Below are some common ones:

Task 5

Can you guess what these abbreviations mean? Discuss them with a partner.

(1) A. (2) govt. (3) info. (4) min. (5) sts. (6) v.

Task 6

Do you know (or use) any other abbreviations? Add them to the list above.

• Use spacing to make your notes clear, well organised and easy to remember - careful use of space, numbers and letters can make your notes very clear, for example, you could write notes like this:

Note-making: use space notes easy to read + remember; easy to add points later.

Use numbers and letters classify main and supporting points; show sequence.

But notice how much clearer they are when written like this:

Note-making: 1. Use of space

(i) notes easy to read + remember

(ii) easy to add points later

2. Use numbers and letters

(i) classify main and supporting points

(ii) show sequence

• Underline to draw attention or to emphasise

Task 7

Now use the techniques outlines above to rewrite in note form the two paragraphs in Tasks 1 and 2.

Task 8

Using the book "Study Listening" and the tape that goes with it (available in ELSC Resource Room), do the task in Unit 12, which involves listening to a recording of a talk and making notes on it. The task should preferably be done with one or more partners. Then check what you have written against the suggested notes in the Teacher's Book.

When should I write up my notes?

The notes that you make are dependent on your memory of what was said in the lecture. You might not have time to note down everything you want during the lecture itself so you must rewrite them as soon as possible so that you don't forget anything.

Finally, you should decide on a personal note-taking style and be willing to adapt according to whom you are listening.

For more practice in note-taking, go to the Pathway on note-taking. In particular, look at these books which can be found in the ELSC Resource Room:

Lynch, Tony (1983). Study Listening. (Student's Book). Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. Units 6 & 12.

Heaton, Brian & Dunmore, Don (1992). Learning to Study in English. Macmillan. London. Units 5 & 10.

Suggested Answers

Task 1

When a teacher or lecturer recommends a student to read a book it's usually for a particular purpose. The book may contain useful information about the topic being studied or it may be invaluable for the ideas or views that it puts forward, and so on. In many cases, the teacher doesn't suggest that the whole book should be read. In fact, he may just refer to a few pages which have a direct bearing on the matter being discussed.

Task 2

Many students no particular purpose in reading. Read page by page, slowly. No overall view of text, soon forget.

Task 3

(1) ?	(j) is the statement correct?
(2) /	(b) or
(3) & or +	(f) and/plus
(4) -	(a) dash (join ideas/replace missing punctuation
(5) " "	(c) ditto (means the same as the words above)
(6) =	(i) is/are/have/has/equals
(7)	(g) does not equal, is the opposite of
(8)	(d) leads to/results in/causes
(9) >	(h) greater than, more than
(10)	(e) fall/decrease

Task 5

Task 7

When lecturer recommends book = for part. purpose

not whole book - just few pp.

When sts. read = no part. purpose

Sts. often read p. by p. etc., i.e., slowly

Result = (1) no overall view

(2) forget soon

Reference

James, K., Jordan, R.R., & Matthews, A.J. (1979). Listening Comprehension & Note-taking Practice Course. Collins. London. (Including tape)

Last revised: September 1998

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