Note-taking in Lectures For listeners,

Note-taking is a complex activity which requires a high level of ability in many separate skills. Taking your own notes will promote a deeper understanding of the content of the lecture. How to take notes? The general principle in note-taking is to reduce the language by shortening words and sentences. Today I’m going to analyze the four most important of these skills.
    Firstly, the student has to understand what the lecturer says as he says it. The student cannot stop the lecture in order to look up a new word or check an unfamiliar sentence pattern. This puts the non-native speaker of English under a particularly severe strain. Often—as we’ve already seen in a previous lecture—he may not be able to recognize words in speech which he understands straight away in print. He’ll also meet words in a lecture which are completely new to him. While he should, of course, try to develop the ability to infer their meaning from the context, he won’t always be able to do this successfully. He must not allow failure of this kind to discourage him however. It’s often possible to understand much of a lecture by concentrating solely on those points which are most important. But how does the student decide what’s important? This is in itself another skill he must try to develop. It is, in fact, the second of the four skills I want to talk about today.
    Probably the most important piece of information in a lecture is the title itself. If this is printed or referred to beforehand the student should study it carefully and make sure he’s in no doubt about its meaning. Whatever happens he should make sure that he writes it down accurately and completely, A title often implies many of the major points that will later be covered in the lecture itself. It should help the student therefore to decide what the main point of the lecture will be.
    A good lecturer, of course, of ten signals what’s important or unimportant. He may give direct signals or in direct signals. Many lecturers, for example, explicitly tell their audience that a point is important and that the student should write it down. Unfortunately, the lecturer who’s trying to establish a friendly relationship with his audience is likely on these occasions to employ a colloquial style. He might say such things as "This is, of course, the crunch" or "Perhaps you’d like to get it down". Although this will help the student who’s a native English-speaker, it may very well cause difficulty for the non-native English speaker. He’ll therefore have to make a big effort to get used to the various styles of his lecturers.
    It’s worth remembering that most lecturers also give indirect signals to indicate what’s important. They either pause or speak slowly or speak loudly or use a greater range of intonation, or they employ a combination of these devices, when they say something important. Conversely, their sentences are delivered quickly, softly, within a narrow range of intonation and with short or infrequent pauses when they are saying something which is incidental. It is, of course, helpful for the student to be aware of this and for him to focus his attention accordingly.
    Having sorted out the main points, however, the student still has to write them down. And he has to do this quickly and clearly. This is, in fact, the third basic skill he must learn to develop. In order to write at speed most students find it helps to abbreviate. They also try to select only those words which give maximum information. These are usually nouns, but sometimes verbs or adjectives. Writing only one point on each line also helps the student to understand his notes when he comes to read them later. An important difficulty is, of course, finding time to write the notes. If the student chooses the wrong moment to write he may miss a point of greater importance. Connecting words or connectives may guide him to a correct choice here. Those connectives which indicate that the argument is proceeding in the same direction also tell the listener that it’s safe time to write "moreover," "furthermore," "also," etc. , are examples of this. Connectives such as "however," "on the other hand" or "nevertheless" usually mean that new and perhaps unexpected information is going to follow. Therefore, it may, on these occasions, be more appropriate to listen.
    The fourth skill that the student must develop is one that is frequently neglected, He must learn to show the connections between the various points he’s noted. This can often be done more effectively by a visual presentation than by a lengthy statement in words. Thus the use of spacing, underlining, and of conventional symbols plays an important part in efficient note-taking. Points should be numbered, too, wherever possible. In this way the student can see at a glance the framework of the lecture.