.anote Taking/good Listening Skills (Not In Question Format)

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The Cornell Note Taking System

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Each (Question) is just a tip to remember when taking notes/listening.

The format provides the perfect opportunity for following through with the 5 R's of note-taking. Here they are:

Hint 1

Record.
Reduce.
Recite.
Reflect.
Review.

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1. Record. During the lecture, record in the main column as many meaningful facts and ideas as you can. Write legibly.

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2. Reduce. As soon after as possible, summarize these ideas and facts concisely in the Recall Column. Summarizing clarifies meanings and relationships, reinforces continuity, and strengthens memory. Also, it is a way of preparing for examinations gradually and well ahead of time.

Hint 2

3. Recite. Now cover the column, using only your jottings in the Recall Column as cues or "flags" to help you recall, say over facts and ideas of the lecture as fully as you can, not mechanically, but in your own words and with as much appreciation of the meaning as you can. Then, uncovering your notes, verify what you have said. This procedure helps to transfer the facts and ideas of your long term memory.

Front 3

4. Reflect. Reflective students distill their opinions from their notes. They make such opinions the starting point for their own musings upon the subjects they are studying. Such musings aid them in making sense out of their courses and academic experiences by finding relationships among them. Reflective students continually label and index their experiences and ideas, put them into structures, outlines, summaries, and frames of reference. They rearrange and file them. Best of all, they have an eye for the vital-for the essential. Unless ideas are placed in categories, unless they are taken up from time to time for re-examination, they will become inert and soon forgotten.

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5. Review. If you will spend 10 minutes every week or so in a quick review of these notes, you will retain most of what you have learned, and you will be able to use your knowledge currently to greater and greater effectiveness.

Hint 3

LEARNING BY LISTENING
*Academic Skills Center*Dartmouth College*301 Collis*HB 6173*[phone]* [e-mail]* *http://www.dartmouth.edu/admin/acskills/*

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You can learn a lot through listening. In college, it will be a prime source of information. Unfortunately, people do not instinctively listen well. Listening is a skill which must be developed.

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If you apply the following suggestions, you will find yourself listening more effectively, both in class and out.

Hint 4

1. Determine why what the speaker is saying is important to you. If you don't have an immediate, vivid reason for listening to a speaker, you are an unmotivated listener.

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2. Take responsibility for what is being said. The responsibility for interest and understanding lies with you, not with the speaker. Learning is up to the learner. If you simply want to sit passively and blame the speaker for your lack of success, then you're not a serious learner.

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3. If you can't hear, arrange things so you can. Move away from sources of noise-human or mechanical. Sit where you can see the speaker easily, and where other distractions are at a minimum.

Hint 5

4. Listen to what the speaker is saying. Don't tune the speaker out because you don't like something about him/her or the message. Be sure you understand something before you reject it.

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5. Look for the speaker's pattern of organization. In a lecture, a speaker is generally referring to notes or some other source of information. You can understand much better if you are able to recognize what the speaker's driving at and how the speaker's getting there.

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6. Look for the main idea or ideas of the presentation. Facts are important only as they support the speaker's points. If you have trouble distinguishing between the important and the trivial, a friend or a tutor in the Academic Skills Center can help you.

Hint 6

7. Don't let your mind wander. Your thoughts move far more rapidly than the swiftest mouth, and the urge to stray is tempting. Your attention span can be increased, however, through deliberate effort. Continue to practice the habit of attention and don't be discouraged by early failures.

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8. Take notes while you listen. Even if you recognize everything being said, jot it down, because you won't remember it later unless you do.

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TAKING LECTURE NOTES
©Academic Skills Center, Dartmouth College 2001

Hint 7

I. There are many reasons for taking lecture notes.

A. Making yourself take notes forces you to listen carefully and test your understanding of the material.

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B. When you are reviewing, notes provide a gauge to what is important in the text.

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C. Personal notes are usually easier to remember than the text.

Hint 8

D. The writing down of important points helps you to remember then even before you have studied the material formally.

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II. Instructors usually give clues to what is important to take down. Some of the more common clues are:

A. Material written on the blackboard.

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B. Repetition

Hint 9

C. Emphasis
1. Emphasis can be judged by tone of voice and gesture.
2. Emphasis can be judged by the amount of time the instructor spends on points and the number of examples he or she uses.

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D. Word signals (e.g. "There are two points of view on . . . " "The third reason is . . . " " In conclusion . . . ")

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E. Summaries given at the end of class.

Hint 10

F. Reviews given at the beginning of class.

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III. Each student should develop his or her own method of taking notes, but most students find the following suggestions helpful:

A. Make your notes brief.
1. Never use a sentence where you can use a phrase. Never use a phrase where you can use a word.
2. Use abbreviations and symbols, but be consistent.

Back 11

B. Put most notes in your own words. However, the following should be noted exactly:
1. Formulas
2. Definitions
3. Specific facts

Hint 11

C. Use outline form and/or a numbering system. Indention helps you distinguish major from minor points.

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D. If you miss a statement, write key words, skip a few spaces, and get the information later.

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E. Don't try to use every space on the page. Leave room for coordinating your notes with the text after the lecture. (You may want to list key terms in the margin or make a summary of the contents of the page.)

Hint 12

F. Date your notes. Perhaps number the pages.

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SAVING TIME ON NOTETAKING

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Here are some hints regarding taking notes on classroom lectures that can save time for almost any student. Some students say that they plan to rewrite or type their notes later. To do so is to use a double amount of time; once to take the original notes and a second to rewrite them. The advice is simple: DO IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME!

Hint 13

Second, there are some students who attempt to take notes in shorthand. Though shorthand is a valuable tool for a secretary, it is almost worthless for a student doing academic work. Here's why. Notes in shorthand cannot be studied in that form. They must first be transcribed. The act of transcribing notes takes an inordinate amount of time and energy but does not significantly contribute to their mastery. It is far better to have taken the notes originally in regular writing and then spend the time after that in direct study and recitation of the notes.

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Third, do not record the lesson on a cassette tape or any other tape. The lecture on tape precludes flexibility. This statement can be better understood when seen in the light of a person who has taken his/her notes in regular writing. Immediately after taking the notes this person can study them in five minutes before the next class as s/he walks toward the next building, as s/he drinks his/her coffee, or whatever. Furthermore, this student, in looking over his/her notes, may decide that the notes contain only four worthwhile ideas which s/he can highlight, relegating the rest of the lecture to obscurity. Whereas the lecture on tape has to be listened to in its entirety including the worthwhile points as well as the "garbage," handwritten notes may be studied selectively. A student who takes the easy way out - recording the lecture on tape as he or she sits back doing nothing - will box him or herself into inflexibility.

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NOTE MAKING

Hint 14

Learning to make notes effectively will help you to improve your study and work habits and to remember important information. Often, students are deceived into thinking that because they understand everything that is said in class they will therefore remember it. This is dead wrong! Write it down.

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As you make notes, you will develop skill in selecting important material and in discarding unimportant material. The secret to developing this skill is practice. Check your results constantly. Strive to improve. Notes enable you to retain important facts and data and to develop an accurate means of arranging necessary information.

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Here are some hints on note making.

1. Don't write down everything that you read or hear. Be alert and attentive to the main points. Concentrate on the "meat" of the subject and forget the trimmings.

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2. Notes should consist of key words or very short sentences. If a speaker gets sidetracked it is often possible to go back and add further information.

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3. Take accurate notes. You should usually use your own words, but try not to change the meaning. If you quote directly from an author, quote correctly.

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4. Think a minute about your material before you start making notes. Don't take notes just to be taking notes! Take notes that will be of real value to you when you look over them at a later date.

Hint 16

5. Have a uniform system of punctuation and abbreviation that will make sense to you. Use a skeleton outline and show importance by indenting. Leave lots of white space for later additions.

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6. Omit descriptions and full explanations. Keep your notes short and to the point. Condense your material so you can grasp it rapidly.

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7. Don't worry about missing a point.

Hint 17

8. Don't keep notes on oddly shaped pieces of paper. Keep notes in order and in one place.

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9. Shortly after making your notes, go back and rework (not redo) your notes by adding extra points and spelling out unclear items. Remember, we forget rapidly. Budget time for this vital step just as you do for the class itself.

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10. Review your notes regularly. This is the only way to achieve lasting memory.

Hint 18

WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT LISTENING
©Academic Skills Center, Dartmouth College 2001
Ralph G. Nichols
The Supervisor's Notebook, Scott, Foresman & Co.
Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring 1960

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The business of becoming a good listener primarily consists of getting rid of bad listening habits and replacing them with their counterpart skills.

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TEN BAD LISTENING HABITS


Several years ago I identified what seemed to me to be the ten worst listening habits in America today. Though my discussion of them here is in relation to the ways they may affect us in a formal listening situation, the effects of these habits can be just as devastating in less formal listening situations at home, at school, in business or social groups.

Hint 19

1. Calling the Subject Dull
Bad listeners often finds a subject too dry and dusty to command their attention and they use this as an excuse to wander off on a mental tangent. Good listeners may have heard a dozen talks on the same subject before, but they quickly decide to see if the speaker has anything that can be of use to them.
The key to good listening is that little three-letter word use. Good listeners are sifters, screeners, and winnowers of the wheat from the chaff. They are always hunting for something practical or worthwhile to store in the back of their mind to put to work in the months and years ahead. G.K. Chesterton said many years ago that in all this world there is no such thing as an uninteresting subject, only uninterested people.

Front 20

2. Criticizing the Speaker
It's the indoor sport of most bad listeners to find fault with the way a speaker looks, acts, and talks. Good listeners may make a few of the same criticisms but they quickly begin to pay attention to what is said, not how it is said. After a few minutes, good listeners become oblivious to the speaker's mannerisms or his/her faults in delivery. They know that the message is ten times as important as the clothing in which it comes garbed.

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3. Getting Overstimulated
Listening efficiency drops to zero when the listeners react so strongly to one part of the presentation that they miss what follows. At the University of Minnesota we think this bad habit is so critical that, in the classes where we teach listening, we put at the top of every blackboard the words: Withhold evaluation until comprehension is complete -- hear the speaker out. It is important that we understand the speaker's point of view fully before we accept or reject it.

Hint 20

4. Listening Only For Facts
I used to think it was important to listen for facts. But I've found that almost without exception it is the poor listeners who say they listen for facts. They do get facts, but they garble a shocking number and completely lose most of them.
Good listeners listen for the main ideas in a speech or lecture and use them as connecting threads to give sense and system to the whole. In the end they have more facts appended to those connecting threads than the catalogers who listen only for facts. It isn't necessary to worry too much about fact as such, for facts have meaning only when principles supply the context.

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5. Trying To Outline Everything
There's nothing wrong with making an outline of a speech -- provided the speaker is following an outline method of presentation. But probably not more than a half or perhaps a third of all speeches given are built around a carefully prepared outline.
Good listeners are flexible. They adapt their note taking to the organizational pattern of the speaker-they may make an outline, they may write a summary, they may list facts and principles -- but whatever they do they are not rigid about it.

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6. Faking Attention
The pose of chin propped on hand with gaze fixed on speaker does not guarantee good listening. Having adopted this pose, having shown the overt courtesy of appearing to listen to the speaker, the bad listener feels conscience free to take off on any of a thousand tangents.
Good listening is not relaxed and passive at all. It's dynamic; it's constructive; it's characterized by a slightly increased heart rate, quicker circulation of the blood, and a small rise in bodily temperature. It's energy consuming; it's plain hard work. The best definition I know of the word attention is a "collection of tensions that can be resolved only by getting the facts or ideas that the speaker is trying to convey."

Hint 21

7. Tolerating Distraction
Poor listeners are easily distracted and may even create disturbances that interfere with their own listening efficiency and that of others. They squirm, talk with their neighbors, or shuffle papers. They make little or no effort to conceal their boredom. Good listeners try to adjust to whatever distractions there are and soon find that they can ignore them. Certainly, they do not distract others.

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8. Choosing Only What's Easy
Often we find the poor listeners have shunned listening to serious presentations on radio or television. There is plenty of easy listening available, and this has been their choice. The habit of avoiding even moderately difficult expository presentations in one's ensure-time listening can handicap anyone who needs to use listening as a learning tool.

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9. Letting Emotion-Laden Words Get In The Way
It is a fact that some words carry such an emotional load that they cause some listeners to tune a speaker right out: such as, affirmative action and feminist-they are fighting words to some people.
I sometimes think that one of the most important studies that could be made would be the identification of the one hundred greatest trouble-making words in the English language. If we knew what these words were, we could ring them out into the open, discuss them, and get them behind us. It's so foolish to let a mere symbol for something stand between us and learning.

Hint 22

10. Wasting the Differential Between Speech and Thought Speed
Americans speak at an average rate of 125 words per minute in ordinary conversation. A speaker before an audience slows down to about 100 words per minute. How fast do listeners listen? Or, to put the question in a better form, how many words a minute do people normally think as they listen? If all their thoughts were measurable in words per minute, the answer would seem to be that an audience of any size will average 400 to 500 words per minute as they listen.
Here is a problem. The differential between the speaker at 100 words per minute and the easy thought speed of the listener at 400 or 500 words per minute is a snare and a pitfall. It lures the listener into a false sense of security and breeds mental tangents.

Front 23

However, with training in listening, the difference between thought speed and speech speed can be made a source of tremendous power. Listeners can hear everything the speaker says and not what s/he omits saying; they can listen between the lines and do some evaluating as the speech progresses. To do this, to exploit this power, good listeners must automatically practice three skills in concentration:

Back 23

Anticipating the next point. Good listeners try to anticipate the points a speaker will make in developing a subject. If they guess right, the speaker's words reinforce their guesses. If they guess wrong, they'll have to do some thinking to discover why they and the speaker failed to agree. In either case, their chances of understanding and remembering what was said is nearly double what it would have been if they had simply listened passively.

Hint 23

Identifying supporting material. Good listeners try to identify a speaker's supporting material. After all, a person can't go on making points without giving listeners some of the evidence on which the conclusions are based, and the bricks and mortar that have been used to build up the argument should be examined for soundness.

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Recapitulating. With the tremendous thought speed that everyone has, it is easy to summarize in about five seconds the highlights covered by a speaker in about five minutes. When the speaker stops to take a swallow of water or walks over to the blackboard to write something or even takes a deep breath, the experienced listener makes a mental summary. Half a dozen summaries of the highlights of a fifty-minute talk will easily double the understanding and retention important points in a talk.

Back 24

Taking Notes for Someone Else
These are some practical suggestions for taking notes for someone else, as well as strategies to help you improve your own notetaking abilities.
©Academic Skills Center, Dartmouth College 2001

Hint 24

General Info:
• Be sure of your purpose and the speaker's purpose.
• Attend all lectures.
• Sit up front so you can see and hear better.

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Format:
• Record the date, place, topic/title and presenter.
• Number your pages.
• Use dark ink and write on one side of the page.
• Use a double entry notetaking system (see "Cornell Notetaking System" handout)

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• Write neatly. Make notes complete and clear enough to understand when you come back to them.
• Use shorthand ('Fe' for iron, '=' for equals, '@' for at, etc.) and abbreviations. Feel free to develop your own set of abbreviations, but please put a key at the top of the page so your notes can be understood.

Hint 25

• Highlight important items with asterisks(*) or draw circles or boxes around critical info. Mark important ideas, terms, concepts with different colors, underlines, or asterisks. Indentation, underscoring and starring are also effective for indicating relative importance of items. Show uncertainty with a circled question mark.
• Leave plenty of white space for later additions. Skip lines. Leave space between main ideas.

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What to write:
• Definitely copy:
* Anything written on the board or presented on an overhead.
* Any info that is repeated or emphasized. Ways to emphasize include: tone or gesture, repetition, illustration on board, reference to text, and use of cue words such as: finally, remember, most important, another cause, etc.
* All numbered or listed items.
* All terms and definitions.
* Examples.
* New words and ideas.

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• If the instructor refers to the text, mark the page number in notes to refer.
• When you cannot keep up with the speaker, jot down key nouns and verbs so that you can return to the latter and ask questions/fill in gaps. Leave blanks for words, phrases or ideas you miss. Ask a classmate to fill in the gaps.
• Include comments the class makes that the professor agrees with.

Hint 26

Listening:
• Listen carefully to what is being said.
• Pay attention to qualifying words(sometimes, usually, rarely, etc.)

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• Notice signals indicating that a change of direction is coming (but, however, on the other hand)
• Look for meaning and implications; be an active listener.

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Additionally:
• Ask questions if permitted; if not, jot down questions in your notebook.
• Soon after the presentation, review your notes, rewrite skimpy or incomplete parts, and fill in gaps you remember but didn't record.

Hint 27

Learn all of this, and you will be such a better student, it will help improve listening and speaking with other also...
DO IT!!!