Taking Notes

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                                                    Taking Notes
An Important Tool for Learning Language and Content

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Overview

Taking notes will serve as a very active part of your learning in many of the lessons you complete in this course. Taking notes serves many important purposes such as:

§  getting you to listen and learn actively;
§  checking to see if you understand key business concepts;
§  checking to see if you understand the English used;
§  recording information that is unclear and needs further attention;
§  and reviewing key information and language you learned after you have logged off. It is at this point you have more time to think and digest the content of a lesson, make connections to the real world and even apply some of what you have learned to a real business situation.

At the end of the day, your notes will serve as an important learning tool and a record of information you have come across in your daily lessons. Be sure to keep these notes as a constant reference.

If we relate this note-taking task to what you might encounter in the real world of business, the skill is transferable. Due to the nature of the work, people in business often find themselves at meetings, carrying on telephone conversations, and reading various lengths and styles of documents. In all these situations, it is likely that you – the business person- will want to take notes as a way to recall the main ideas of a discussion or what you read. 

Note-taking Tips

As a way to help you with your note-taking, the lessons will often provide you with a bit of guidance such as a chart to fill in or key words to be on the look out for. However, there are a few additional tips we would like to provide to further help you with the task of taking notes. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

1.     Point Form: There is no need to write complete sentences or worry about punctuation. These notes are for your eyes only. However, we do recommend that for language learning purposes that you keep your notes in English. For obvious reasons, this will help you to develop your listening skills and comprehension skills.

2.     Organizing Information: A good listener must try to organize the information while listening. Therefore, the listener must try to understand what information is the main idea and what information is of secondary importance. Identifying main ideas and supporting details is an important skill to have when you listen, read, write and speak. Without some type of organization, the ideas of a communication can often get lost in the confusion of how the ideas are presented.

3.     Recognize Unnecessary Information: In order to be accurate in your notes, and not get too carried away by recording too much information, it is important to find the main idea, important support information, and information that is not so important. 

Implications for Your Learning

The exercise of taking notes is directly linked to your ability to listen actively. As an active listener, learner, and participant of this course, this will have important implications for your learning of business content and progress in the language. Taking good notes -and they will get better as you become a better listener and note-taker – will allow you to participate and benefit from this online learning environment to the fullest. Beyond this online learning environment, improving your active listening skills through note-taking exercises should add to your confidence in business situations where you need to use English. With stronger listening skills, hopefully there will be less opportunity for misunderstanding and miscommunication due to struggles with listening and catching main ideas in English. All in all, the more you practice the stronger and more confident you will be.


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