Introduction

As well as benefiting from active listening, the actual process of note-taking in turn promotes engaged listening! Your notes provide a record of your learning in lecture-time and a prompt for memory during later study. Some analysts state that in just 30 minutes after attending a lecture, you will already have forgotten approximately 50% of its content! It is important to bear in mind that your lecture notes should not be your only point of reference. You should also be taking notes when you do your course readings (see unit, ‘Active and critical reading’), library research (see unit, ‘Information literacy’) and other activities associated with your discipline (e.g. laboratory work, experiments, field work, other text readings such as paintings, films, events, etc.). You could use your reflective learning journal to make connections between all these activities and in this way deepen and synthesise your learning experiences. (See unit, ‘Reflective learning: keeping a reflective learning journal’)

There may be certain themes, concepts and methods of presentation that you should be listening out for in lectures in your particular discipline(s) and perhaps particularly appropriate note-taking strategies too. Over the course of several lectures you will begin to notice their emergence. Ideally, all learning skills should be developed within the particular parameters of your discipline(s). As you engage in the university learning experience you will progressively develop knowledge of subject-specific discourse, and through participating in it come to understand its particular conventions. In the meantime, if in doubt, check with your lecturers.

Learning objectives

At the end of this unit you will be able to:

• understand why you need good note-taking and active listening skills,
• work with notes provided by the lecturer,
• choose from a number of note-taking formats,
• take good notes in a way that suits your particular learning preference(s),
• understand that there is more to note-taking than what you do in lectures,
• use a systematic approach for effective listening and note-taking i.e. ‘before the lecture’, ‘during the lecture’, ‘after the lecture’, and ‘periodically’).

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