An Investigation Into The Effect Of Note-taking In English Listening Tests For Senior High

This study is conducted to investigate the effect of note-taking in English listening tests that contains nine short conversations and a short monologue for Chinese senior high schools. The process of memory and the process of listening comprehension are adopted as the primary theoretical basis, combined with a review of the empirical study on the functions of note-taking and on the content of notes both in and out of China, then, an experimental test with50senior students, a questionnaire survey, and the collecting of these subjects’notes were taken to find out what kind of effect of note-taking performed on senior English listening tests.The main findings of the study include:(1) Note-taking didn’t play a positive effect on the overall test performance on senior English listening tests. On the contrary, note-taking played a negative effect on the test performance. It is represented as:Subjects who are asked to take notes during English listening test would have a worse performance than those not take notes.(2) By comparing the positive effect of note-taking on detailed idea items and general idea items, the findings indicate that note-taking plays more significant role on detailed idea items than general idea items.(3) Subjects’ attitude of note-taking during listening tests didn’t play a direct effect on the test performance. No matter the subjects believed note-taking would benefit the test performance or not, when asked to take notes during tests they did worse performance than those not take notes.The significance of this study lies in the enlightening for both English educators and learners in senior high schools to the effect of note-taking in English listening comprehension test. As for the educators, they would find out whether it is necessary to train the students’ note-taking ability in class. As for the learners, they would know when to take notes and what kind of notes should be taken during English listening tests. Furthermore, the findings of this study are informative for other similar listening tests.