| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語學系 === 95 === The present study aims to explore the relationship between EFL learners’ note contents and listening comprehension (LC) performance on English lectures along with their retention. In addition, the issue of learners’ reflections on how to take notes is addressed.
The participants in the study were a college professor and 41 English majors who were enrolled in her course, Intermediate Aural-Oral Training. These students were randomly divided into two groups – reviewing and non-reviewing. After listening to a lecture about green tea, they were asked to complete an LC test consisting of 5 global questions and 10 local questions. One week later, both groups had to complete a recall task. The initial analysis was followed up by the interviews with the participants to gain a better insight.
The results showed that out of the six criteria, test-answerability, major information, information unit, and completeness reached the significance level in correlation with the subjects’ LC performance. A further analysis of the performances of the high achievers and low achievers, it was found that the best predictors of the subjects’ performance were test-answerability and major information. Concerning the question type, the global questions failed to show any significant correlation with their subjects’ note contents. Contrarily, local questions were significantly correlated with the note contents and were in agreement with the previous findings. In the recall task, when required to write down as much as they remembered, the reviewing group jotted down almost twice as many information units as the non-reviewing group, indicating the effects of note-reviewing. The non-reviewing group in fact lost approximately 80% of information and retained only 20%.
Based upon the findings, it is suggested that language teachers may guide students to differentiate major information from minor information. In answering local questions, language teachers may train students to take notes and offer them a chance to take notes. Finally, in order to reinforce students’ learning, reviewing notes deserves its prominence.
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