Application Of Note-taking Skill To The Teaching Of College English Listening

Listening, speaking, reading and writing are the four basic skills of English languagelearning. Among these four basic skills, listening is of the greatest importance which playsa vital role in our daily communication. As listening is playing more and more importantpart in our English study and communication, the college English teachers are payingmore and more attentionto how to improve students‘listening comprehensionability.This article aims at applying note-taking skill to college English listening teaching tosee whether this skill is conducive to improvingcollege students‘listening comprehensionability. The participants of this study are92freshmen from Huazhong University ofScience and Technology. Among them,45students majo r in Electronic InformationEngineering, who form the experimental group; while47students major inOptical-electronic Material and Devices, who form the control group. The students in theexperimental group are taught note-taking skill while those in the control group are taughtin the traditional way. Before training, both groups are required to take a test, which is thelistening subtest of CET4, December,2010as an example. After the training which lastsfor a semester, both groups take another test, the listening subtest of CET4, June,2011.Students‘test scores are fed into the computer and analyzed by SPSS,17.0. The resultsshow that note-taking skill does have a positive effect on improving college studentslistening comprehension ability.Applying note-taking skill in listening teaching is a different way from the traditionalmethod, which might be well worth trying in teaching listening at different levels.