survey sample paper

Abstract:

Chinese EFL Learners’ Class Lecture Notetaking

and Achievement Test Performances

Abstract: Lecture notetaking is an important strategy in language learning. Various researches have identified its three functions in academic learning; encoding, external storage and generative functions. This paper reviews these researches and reports the result of a questionnaire investigation conducted by the author to testify the external storage and generative functions for EFL students in college English Intensive Reading classrooms.

Key words: lecture notetaking; encoding function; external storage function; generative function; generative processing.

中文文摘：

大学英语课堂笔记与英语学习成绩

摘要：本文以86名大学一年级本科生为实验对象，采用问卷调查的形式，对大学英语精读课课堂笔记的方式与课后复习笔记的频率进行了调查，并对其与学生单元词汇测试成绩之间的关系用t检验，单向方差分析与相关性检验进行了分析。结果表明课堂笔记记录方式对词汇记忆无影响，而复习频率与词汇记忆成绩之间呈负相关。

关键词：课堂笔记，编码功能，外在存贮功能，生成功能，生成式加工。

Chinese EFL Learners’ Class Lecture Notetaking

and Achievement Test Performances

1. Introduction

1.1. Background

Lecture notetaking has long attracted the attention of learning strategy researchers. It is generally defined as a cognitive learning strategy achieved specifically through writing down key words or concepts in abbreviated verbal, graphic, or numerical form while listening or reading.(O’Malley, & Chamot 1990) Over decades, a number of studies have been conducted to investigate its role in academic learning. With the efforts made by Di Vesta and Gray(1972) and other researchers, its three functions have been identified and generally accepted: encoding function; external storage function; and generative function.

The encoding function suggests that notetaking is a process in which the learner encodes the knowledge or information he/she receives during the lecture, so as to facilitate learning. It is usually measured by comparing the recall test performance of students who listen and record notes and that of those who only listen to a lecture but do not take notes.

The external storage function suggests that the reviewing of notes stored in a written form facilitates learners' performance on recall tests. One measurement is to compare the performance of students who record and review their notes with those who record notes but don't review them. Among 32 studies reported by Hartley (1983) and Kiewra (1985, 1987), 24 found that students who reviewed notes had a higher achievement test performance than those not permitted to review, 8 other studies reported no difference between reviewers and non-reviewers, and no study indicated that reviewing was dysfunctional. Kiewra and Dubois (1991) also found that students who took and reviewed notes outperformed those who took notes but didn't review them on both cued recall and synthesis tests. Knight and McKelvie's(1986) research also supported the external storage function.

The generative function suggests that notetaking encourages notetakers to actively generate relations among the parts of the learning material or between the present learning material and their prior knowledge. One proof is that notetakers' performance on far-transfer tests was superior to that of non-notetakers among low prior knowledge students (because high prior knowledge students were believed to generally connect learning material to their prior knowledge). Sharager and Mayer (1989) found that note-takers performed better than non-notetakers on recall and transfer tests for students with low prior knowledge of the lecture topic. Another proof is that notes with more characteristics of generative processing produce in learners

better learning results whether by reviewing or recording them.(Kiewra, & Dubois 1988; Sharager, & Mayer 1989) Examples of generative processing include "students' development of summaries, graphs, tables, analogies, examples, and conclusions", while examples of non-generative processing are "maintenance rehearsal, copying, or simply reading already-generated material".(Kiewra, & DuBois 1991) Kiewra and Dubois(1988) provided three different forms of study notes for students' reviewing: a complete text, a linear outline, and a matrix-form note. Their experiment showed that the outline and matrix notes generally produced in their reviewers higher recall performances than text notes, and the matrix note reviewers had higher transfer test performances than text note reviewers. In 1991, Kiewra and Dubois reassured that "it is the review of notes---if time permits---that facilitates generative processing" in learners. Risch and Kiewra(1990) found matrix-structure notes proved effective for concept learning and appeared to be effective for cross topical recall if students used the matrix for both recording and reviewings.

In foreign language classrooms, notetaking is also an important learning strategy.(O'Malley, & Chamot 1990) Are these functions of notetaking of significance to language learners' performance on achievement tests when they are also required to recall what they have learned in language classes?

1.2.Hypotheses

This research, therefore, is intended to examine the relevance of generative and external storage functions of notetaking to Chinese EFL learners' achievement test performances. The two hypotheses of this research are:

1. Learners whose own notes demonstrate more characteristics of generative processing have better performances on these tests. If this hypothesis is supported, generative function of notetaking does contribute to EFL learners learning.

2. Learners' note-reviewing frequency is positively correlated with their test performances. If this hypothesis is supported, EFL learners do benefit from the external storage function of notetaking.

2. Method

2.1. Participants

Our subjects were 86 first-year college students from 4 intact English classes at the researcher's college. They were aged between 17 and 20 (with one exception of one subject who was only 15). The subjects were enrolled in 4 different majors and were assigned to their present English classes according to their performances on a placement English test 2 weeks after their enrollment in college. They had all started to take the college English course three months before this research.

2.2. Instruments

The first instrument is two unit quizzes on first-year students. The quizzes all take the form of an objective vocabulary test. Words and expressions were already provided on the test paper as choices. Students were required to choose one of them to complete given sentences. Each subject's mean score on these two quizzes was used as an indicator of students' achievement test performance.

The second instrument is a 5-item questionnaire inquiring about EFL learners' notetaking modes.(See Appendix 1) Question 1 was intended to find out the ratio of students who took notes against those who didn't. Questions 2 to 4 addressed note-takers while non-note-takers were only required to answer Question 5. Questions 2, and 3 were used to find out the generative processing demonstrated in English

learners' notes. Question 2 was meant to find out what lecture content learners took down in their notes: (A)familiar; (B)strange; (C)recognizable, (D) familiar and recognizable; (E)recognizable and strange; (F) familiar and strange; or (G) all words, phrases and sentence patterns. Choices B, C, and E were assumed to demonstrate more generative processing than choices A, D, F, and G. Question 3 investigated the organization of learners' notes: following the lecture sequence(A, B, C),or self organized (D, E, F); and the form their notes took: verbatim notes (A, D), paraphrased notes (B, E), or both paraphrased notes and verbatim notes (C, F). It was assumed that choices A, B, C involved more generative processing than choices D, E, F, choices B, E involved more generative processing than choices C, F, and choices C, F more generative than choices A, D. Question 4 "How often do you review your notes?" was used to find out learners' reviewing frequency on a five-point Lickert Scale. Question 5 asked non-note-takers why they didn't take notes in the English Intensive Reading class.

3. Results

3.1. Findings

Among the 86 subjects, 82 reported that they took notes in Intensive Reading class while 4 reported no. Their responses to the questionnaire are shown in Table 1 of Appendix 2.

Finding 1: T-tests and an ANOV A test shows that the first hypothesis is not supported: no statistically significant difference is found between the performance of students whose notes demonstrate more generative processing and that of other groups,

namely:

A. An independent t-test shows that the performances of students who took down lecture content with more generative processing, i.e. recognizable, strange or both recognizable and strange words, phrases and sentence patterns, did not differ significantly from that of other students. The statistical result is shown in Table 2:

B. An independent t-test again suggests that students who organized notes in their own way did not have performances significantly different from those who took down notes by following the lecture sequence.(See Table 3 below)

C. An ANOV A test shows that there is no significant difference in the performances among students who took only verbatim notes, those who took both paraphrased and verbatim notes and those who took only paraphrased notes.(See Table 4)

Finding 2: The Spearman's rho correlation test shows that the second hypothesis is not rejected: learners' note-reviewing frequency has a significant correlation with their achievement test performance, but it is a negative correlation. (See Table 5 below)

The relationship between note-reviewing frequency and achievement test performance was shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. Note-reviewing frequency (X axis) and achievement test scores(Y-axis)

3.2. Discussion

The findings show that the two hypotheses posed at the beginning of the research are not supported.

Finding 1 further suggests that generative processing in learners' notes doesn't M e a n A C H S C O R E

make any difference in their achievement test performances for the Intensive English Reading course. This research experimented with three new measurements of generative processing in EFL class lecture notetaking, by comparing different notetakers' note content, note organization and note form/language. The generative function of notes wasn't proved to be effective in EFL learners' class learning. This result is different from that found by Kiewra and Dubois(1988, 1991) and Risch and Kiewra(1990), concerning the generative function of learners' notes in academic learning. (see section 1.1) The divergence indicates that in language learning, generative function of notes needs to be reconsidered.

Finding 2 demonstrates that there is a relationship between learners' reviewing frequency and their test performance. But it is a negative one. Higher reviewing frequency is found to result in lower test performance among learners. It shows that in EFL learning, the external storage function of notetaking is limited, which is different from what Hartley(1983), Kiewra(1985, 1987), Kiewra and Dubois(1991) found in their researches.(See section 1.1) However, these earlier researchers didn't compare the performances of learners with different note-reviewing frequencies and the lectures their subjects attended didn't have relevance to language learning. The present research result further suggests that EFL learners can't depend on note-reviewing alone to achieve a good learning result. Learners who don't depend on their lecture notes so much and thus don't review them so often may have taken up other methods to brush up what they learn in the class and thus would perform better on achievement tests. The researcher later interviewed some of the respondents. They admitted that

notetaking was necessary and helpful in the English class but they didn't rely on their notes alone to review the language points the teacher taught in class.

4. Conclusion

The author believes that this study has made two contributions. Firstly, this study attempted a step toward how far the external function could go in lecture notetaking. Previous researches only compared the test performance of notetakers who reviewed notes and those who didn't, but didn't pay enough attention to differences in their reviewing frequency. Secondly, new measurements were introduced to assess the generative function of lecture notetaking, though they didn't prove effective in this research and still need improvement. Because notetaking in language learning classrooms is different from that for academic courses, the matrix and outline form of notes may not be relevant demonstrations of generative processing in language classroom notetaking.

This study has two limitations. Firstly, learners' notetaking modes are based on their response to a questionnaire, rather than on their real notes. Secondly, the study is based on the assumption that all the factors that may affect notetaking are in perfect control. Nevertheless, the researcher only did what she could do to control the variables.

With regard to these limitations, the author offers three suggestions for later researches as follows.

A. Students’ notes can be collected for study after instructing students to take

notes on notebooks for a short period of time.

B. The functions of notetaking can be investigated in a broader context. Classroom notetaking is not the only method for students to review the lecture content. By investigating the functions of notetaking, learners' other English learning methods must also be considered.

C. As for the generative function of notetaking, the measurements used in this study have to be revised, or new measurements have to be developed for the study of notetaking in EFL classes.

Acknowledgements:

Thanks must be given to Professor Gao Yihong, whose course of Research Methods in Linguistics first taught me research methods used in this study, and my colleagues who helped distribute the questionnaire in their respective English Intensive Reading classes, namely, Shan Liying, Tian Dongmei, Wang Haifeng, and Zhou Mei. The author is also grateful to revieswers of this article.

References

Di Vesta, F. J., & Gray, S. G. (1972). Listening and notetaking. Journal of Educational Psychology, 64,278-287.

Hartley, J. (1983). Note-taking research: Resetting the scoreboard.Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 36,13-14 .

Kiewra, K. A.(1985). Students' note-taking behaviors and the efficacy of providing the instructor's notes for review. Contemporary Educational Psychology,10,378-386 . Kiewra, K. A. (1987). Investigating notetaking and review: The research and its implications.

Instructional Science, 16, 233-249.

Kiewra, K. A., & DuBois, N. F., et al. (1988). Providing study notes: Comparison of three types of notes for review. Journal-of-Educational-Psychology, 80, 595-597.

Kiewra, K. A., & DuBois, N. F., et al. (1991), Note-Taking Functions and Techniques.

Journal of Educational Psychology, 83,240-45.

Knight, L. J., & McKelvie, S. J. (1986). Effects of attendance, note-taking, and review on memory for a lecture: Encoding vs. external storage functions of notes.Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 18, 52-61.

O'Malley, J. M., & Chamot, A. U. (1990).Learning Strategies in Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Risch, N. L., & Kiewra, K. A. (1990). Content and form variations in note taking: Effects among junior high students. Journal of Educational Research, 83,355-357.

Shrager, L., & Mayer, R. E. (1989). Note-taking fosters generative learning strategies in novices. Journal of Educational Psychology, 81,263-264.

Appendix 1.

“我这样记笔记”问卷

Name姓名 __________________ Gender性别 _________________

1.上精读课时，是否记笔记？是 / 否

如果回答为否，只做第5题。如果回答为是，请做第2,3,4题。

2．（）英语老师在精读课上讲的哪些东西，你会记下来？

A. 自己熟悉的单词，词组，句型。

B. 似曾相识的单词，词组，或句型。

C. 自己感觉陌生的单词，词组，或句型。

D. 自己熟悉的和似曾相识的单词，词组，或句型。

E. 似曾相识的和自己感觉陌生的单词，词组，或句型。

F. 自己熟悉的和自己感觉陌生的单词，词组，或句型。

G. 几乎老师所讲的所有单词，词组，与句型。

3．（）记笔记的时候，你会：

A. 按讲课顺序用老师的原话记录老师所讲的内容。

B. 按顺序用自己的语言记录老师所讲的内容。

C. 按顺序记录，有时用自己的语言，有时用老师的原话。

D. 用老师的原话记录，同时尽可能自己加以归纳。

E. 用自己的语言记录，同时尽可能自己加以归纳。

F. 有时用原话，有时用自己的语言记录，同时自己加以归纳。

4.（）你课后是否看笔记？

1 2 3 4 5

几乎不看很少看经常看几乎每天看

5. 你认为自己之所以不记笔记的主要原因是什么？

Translated version of the questionnaire:

Name __________________ Gender _________________

1. Do you take notes in English Intensive Reading classes? YES / NO

If your answer is NO, please go to Question 5; if it is YES, please answer Questions 2, 3 and 4.

2．（）What content of the teacher's lecture do you take down in your note?

A. Words, expressions, and sentence patterns familiar to you.

B. Words, expressions, and sentence patterns you seem to have encountered earlier. (recognizable)

C. Words, expressions, and sentence patterns completely new to you.

D. Words, expressions, and sentence patterns familiar or recognizable.

E. Words, expressions, and sentence patterns new or recognizable.

F. Words, expressions, and sentence patterns familiar or new.

G. Nearly all the words, expressions, and sentence patterns that you hear and can afford to take down. 3．（）How do you organize your note and in what form/language does your note appear?

A. Follow the lecture sequence and take notes in the teacher's original words(verbatim).

B. Follow the lecture sequence but take notes in your own words(paraphrased).

C. Follow the lecture sequence, but take notes sometimes in the teacher's original words while at other

times in your own words(verbatim and paraphrased).

D. Organize the note for your own convenience(self-organized) but use teacher's original

words(verbatim).

E. Organize the note for your own convenience(self-organized) and try to take notes using your own

words(paraphrased).

F. Organize the note for your own convenience(self-organized), but sometimes use the teacher's original

words while at other times your own words(verbatim and paraphrased).

4. （）How often do you review your notes?

1 2 3 4 5

Hardly ever Seldom Often Almost daily

5. What are the reasons why you don't take notes in English Intensive Reading classes？

Appendix 2.