3311 EFFECTS OF NOTE TAKING SKILLS ON ESLEFL LISTENING COMPREHENSION AT TERTIARY LEVEL Đoàn Minh Thắng, Trần Thị Hoàng Thuý Vy và Ôn Châu Khánh Ngọc Khoa Tiếng Anh, Trường Đại học Công Nghệ TP Hồ C.EFFECTS OF NOTE TAKING SKILLS ON ESLEFL LISTENING COMPREHENSION AT TERTIARY LEVEL
EFFECTS OF NOTE-TAKING SKILLS ON ESL/EFL LISTENING COMPREHENSION AT TERTIARY LEVEL Đoàn Minh Thắng, Trần Thị Hoàng Thuý Vy Ôn Châu Khánh Ngọc * Khoa Tiếng Anh, Trường Đại học Cơng Nghệ TP Hồ Chí Minh GVHD: ThS Trần Kim Hồng TÓM TẮT Listening plays a pivotal role in English language learning as it accounts for the majority of a learner's language comprehension However, thoroughly recalling every detail mentioned earlier for later understanding requires certain cognitive efforts and specific skills such as note-taking which learners frequently fail to take into consideration Therefore, this paper aims to highlight the impacts of note-taking skills on listening comprehension at the tertiary level by closely reviewing related articles so that the study can act as a reference for university students who intend to ameliorate their note-taking skills for better listening comprehension The results reveal that note-taking positively affects students' storage of lecture information and listening performance while it may hinder students’ listening comprehension at some level as they get sidetracked with note-taking Từ khoá: ESL/EFL, lecture recall, listening comprehension, note-taking, tertiary level INTRODUCTION Listening plays a very important role in life It is an instinct that helps us to receive information (Soumokil, Nikijuluw & Lekatompessy, 2021) In communication, listening is the bare minimum for a conversation to continue (Soumokil et al., 2021) According to the study by Örsdemi̇ r and Yilmazer (2016) listening is accountable for 40-50 % of the time but speaking, reading, and writing consist of 25-30%, 11-16% and 9% respectively In fact, taking notes while listening to an English lecture is commonly adopted by university students as this method can facilitate the learning process and the retention of lecture materials (Teng, 2011) However, listening to lectures can place considerable processing pressure on ESL/EFL students, who have habits of interpreting in real-time a monologue This results in linguistic and cognitive demands for learners (Thompson, 2003) According to Ferris and Tagg (1996, as cited in Hayati & Jalilifar, 2009), lack of note-taking skills, problems with note-taking, and listening comprehension are troubles faced by students Lots of note-taking research has been conducted under high-stake exams such as IBT TOEFL and IELTS (Kim, 2019) However, these studies focused on note-taking in testing situations ( Carrell, 2007 & Kim, 2019) rather than in learning situations Therefore, the present study aims to explore the effects of note-taking on listening comprehension by looking closely at five articles LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definitions of note-taking 3311 Note-taking is considered as a process of selecting and summarizing what you hear to record it briefly for later memorization is called a note-taking strategy (Dewitt, 2007) Perfectly remembering every detail while listening is impossible, so it is impossible to take accurate notes of a speech or presentation (Hayati & Jalilifar, 2009) Various note-taking methods are used to serve each purpose, including the Sentence Method, Mind Mapping Method, The Formal Outline Procedure, Clustering, and the Cornell Method Each note-taking method will bring its own effects, so for different purposes, choosing the right note-taking strategy is essential (Hayati & Jalilifar, 2009) 2.2 Impact of note-taking on listening comprehension The effect of note-taking on lectures may stem from the two general functions, namely encoding and external storage Encoding can stimulate attentional mechanisms, boost the learning cognitive processes of coding, integrate and synthesize the lecture information into a personally meaningful form External storage may help learners to rehearse and provide mnemonics and information (Teng, 2011) for the reconstruction of memory According to Titsworth and Kiewra’s study in 2004, the test-taking notes scored 13% higher than not taking notes (Hayati & Jalilifar, 2009) All students who note-taking claim that there are three reasons for taking notes: (1) to help recollect later, (2) to be able to review the ideas when needed, and (3) to be more focused while listening (Soumokil et al., 2021) RESEARCH METHOD The study outlines the effects of note-taking on listening comprehensions from four articles conducted by Teng (2011); Hayati and Jalilifar (2009); Clark, Wayland, Osthus, Brown, Castle and BA (2014); and Soumokil, Nikijuluw, and Lekatompessy (2021) FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 4.1 Positive impact of note-taking on listening comprehension In terms of lecture recall, listening to an L2 passage requires learners to have more cognitive effort than taking notes on an L1 passage because of the additional cognitive demands of working in the L2 In a study of note-taking with EFL learners in Taiwan, Lin (2006) mentioned that note-taking allows the listener to capture more information of the passage that is only heard once Furthermore, L2 listeners can transfer information from the passage into their notes rather than mentally storing all information from a single presentation (Lin, 2006) Taking notes has been proved to promotes learners’s storage of lecture information which can be easily organized for easy re-study when students claimed that ‘I review for a test by looking over my notes to refresh my memory as to what was said in lecture.’ (Clerehan, 1995 & Hale & Courtney, 1994) This notion is aligned with a survey by Hale & Courtney (1994) for EFL students with the results that taking notes helps them feel more comfortable, more focused in remembering information, so they can answer questions more easily 3312 Regarding listening performance, according to DeWitt (2007) and Clark et al ( 2014), note-taking helped language students effectively improve the listening performance by promoting the student's better understanding of the information from the audio when they can repeatedly review their notes Learners also perform better in the listening when they have a chance to to analyze the information from their notes With the availability of the notes, the students answer questions more correctly because they have the information from the audio in their hands to recheck what they have heard (Soumokil et al., 2021) Therefore, students with good note-taking skill come up with higher scores in the listening test than those who don't take note (Clark et al., 2014) 4.2 Negative impact of note-taking on listening comprehension Despite numerous benefits of note-taking mentioned above, according to Hayati and Jalilifar (2009), some students often face difficulty simultaneous listening and note-taking as they think that taking notes during a lecture hinders their listening comprehension These students are so busy noting down the lecture details that they not hear the others In the study by Soumokil et al (2021), note-taking is reported to interfere with learners' concentration in hearing information from the audio, which makes it difficult for them to fully grasp the information As a result, some students feel confused about the answers CONCLUSION To sum up, note-taking has many positive effects on listening skills such as gaining and understanding information, recalling ideas, answering questions better, etc Most students claimed that note-taking is an important strategy to help students confirm their answers based on the information that they take notes For English learning, note-taking helps in widening the vocabulary It also helps to retain information, and this is very important to learn English Because English is not the student's mother language, and it’s not easy to memorize as their first language, they will need to take notes to recall it later REFERENCE [1] Carrell, P L (2007) Note Taking strategies and their relationship to performance on listening comprehension and communicative assessment tasks (TOEFL Monograph Series No MS-35) Princeton, NJ: ETS [2] Clark, M., Wayland, S., Osthus, P., Brown, K G., Castle, S., & BA, A R (2014) The effects of note-taking on foreign language listening comprehension University of Maryland Center for Advanced Study of Language [3] Clerehan, R (1995) Taking it down: Note Taking practices of L1 and L2 students English for Specific Purposes, 14(2), 137-155 3313 [4] DeWit, S (2011) A Study of Factors Affecting EFL Learners English Listening Comprehension and the Strategies for Improvement [5] Hale, G A., & Courtney, R (1994) The effects of note-taking on listening comprehension in the Test of English as a Foreign Language Language Testing, 11(1), 29–47 [6] Hayati, A M., & Jalilifar, A (2009) The impact of note-taking strategies on listening comprehension of EFL learners English Language Teaching, 2(1), 101-111 [7] Kim, J (2019) The Effects of Note-Taking Strategy Training on Students' Notes during Academic English Listening Tests English Teaching, 74(1), 25-48 [8] Lin, M (2006) The effects of note-taking, memory and rate of presentation on EFL learners' listening comprehension Unpublished doctoral dissertation, La Sierra University, California [9] Örsdemi̇ r, E., & Örsdemi̇ r & Yilmazer (2016), M Ö (2016) Note Taking In The Efl Listening Classroom: An Action Research1 [10] Soumokil, J C., Nikijuluw, R C., & Lekatompessy, F M (2021) Students’ Perception toward the Use of Note-Taking Strategy in Listening Class HUELE: Journal of Applied Linguistics, Literature and Culture, 1(1), 17-32 [11] Teng, H C (2011) Exploring note-taking strategies of EFL listenerst Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 15, 480-484 [12] Thompson, S E (2003) Text-structuring metadiscourse, intonation and the signaling of organization in academic lectures Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2, 5-20 3314 ... those who don''t take note (Clark et al., 2014) 4.2 Negative impact of note- taking on listening comprehension Despite numerous benefits of note- taking mentioned above, according to Hayati and Jalilifar... than taking notes on an L1 passage because of the additional cognitive demands of working in the L2 In a study of note- taking with EFL learners in Taiwan, Lin (2006) mentioned that note- taking. .. information As a result, some students feel confused about the answers CONCLUSION To sum up, note- taking has many positive effects on listening skills such as gaining and understanding information,