Note-taking quality and performance on an L2 academic listening test

Abstract

This study investigated the relationships among the quality of L2 test takers' notes evaluated in terms of different levels of information and test takers' performance on open-ended listening tasks tapping into different comprehension subskills. In addition, this study examined the invariance of the structural relationships among the variables across two different note-taking formats, that is, a blank format and an outline format, by employing a multi-group structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. The results indicated that note quality measures, in particular the number of topical ideas found in the notes and the organization of these notes, may be good indicators of test takers' second language academic listening proficiency. It was also found that despite the invariance of structural relationships among variables across the two note-taking formats, the associations between the open-ended listening measures and note quality measures were slightly stronger in the outline format than in the blank format. The implications of these results for L2 academic listening assessment are considered.

Volume 12 Issue 1

“…Quantity of notes, such as the number of terms described in the notes and the number of definitions and examples, therefore, contributed to learning, which has been shown in other studies as well (e.g. Peverly et al 2003, Song 2011. Quality of notes, such as transforming the language of the original text into your own, also appeared to contribute to learning, probably due to the students' higher engagement with the text.…”

“…One of these factors is the amount and type of notes that students take and do not take. Students perform better on tests if they take more notes (Kiewra and Benton 1988, Peverly et al 2003, Song 2011. They tend to remember more of the content of a lecture or a text if they take copious notes in terms of the number of words or propositions.…”

“…LSP teachers need to be able to help these students become more effective note-takers who adopt appropriate strategies for the time they have available. Studies of student notes have, however, primarily focused on note-taking strategies from lectures (Kiewra and Benton 1988, Song 2011, Stefanou, Hoffman and Vielee 2008. Fewer studies have investigated the effects of notes on learning from reading (Peverly et al 2003, Peverly andSumowski 2012).…”

“…Fewer studies have investigated the effects of notes on learning from reading (Peverly et al 2003, Peverly andSumowski 2012). In particular, studies of L2 students' note-taking strategies have mainly focused on listening and not on reading comprehension (Carrell, Dunkel and Mollaun 2004, Clerehan 1995, Song 2011). In addition, previous studies all explored the effects of note-taking strategies on the learning of the general content in the oral or written texts, and not on the specific goal of learning terminology.…”

Testing Hypotheses about Language Learning Using Structural Equation Modeling

“…All of these languageassessment studies were conducted with college or university English language learners, an obviously abundant type of test taker. The researchers of these studies looked at what influences test preparation (Xie & Andrews, 2013), how test-taking strategies influence writing test performance (Yang, 2012), and how note-taking affects listening test performance (Song, 2012). Four articles were construct-validation studies (Aryadoust, 2010;Phakiti, 2008aPhakiti, , 2008bSong, 2008), three of which used CFA to investigate the subcomponents of larger constructs (Aryadoust, 2010;Phakiti, 2008aPhakiti, , 2008b.…”