The Impact of Note-taking Strategies on Listening Comprehension of EFL Learners

The main concern of the present study is to probe the relationship between note-taking strategy and students' listening comprehension (LC) ability. To conduct the study, a language proficiency test was administered to the undergraduate students majoring in English Translation at Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz and sixty students were selected to enter into the next phase of the experiment. They were then randomly divided into three groups: uninstructed note-takers, Cornell note-takers, and non note-takers. Next, the three groups were asked to listen to the listening section of a simulated TOEFL proficiency test. The results, in general, supported a clear link between note-taking strategy and LC ability. An important finding of this study was that students who took notes according to their own method showed lower level of language achievement than those who took notes on the basis of the Cornell method.