applying note-taking strategies to develop high school students’ listening skill – a quasi-experimental research at van xuan – hoai duc high school

This quasi-experimental study conducted upon forty students of class 12D1 at Van Xuan high school aimed at finding out the note-taking strategies used by high-school students, the differ

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

PHÍ THỊ BÍCH

APPLYING NOTE-TAKING STRATEGIES TO DEVELOP HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ LISTENING SKILL – A QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH AT VAN XUAN –

HOAI DUC HIGH SCHOOL

ÁP DỤNG CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC GHI CHÉP ĐỂ PHÁT TRIỂN

KĨ NĂNG NGHE CHO HỌC SINH TRUNG HỌC PHỔ THÔNG – NGHIÊN CỨU BÁN THỰC NGHIỆM TẠI TRƯỜNG THPT VẠN XUÂN – HOÀI ĐỨC

M.A Minor Thesis

Field: English Methodology Code: 60.140.111

HANOI – 2013

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

PHÍ THỊ BÍCH

APPLYING NOTE-TAKING STRATEGIES TO DEVELOP HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ LISTENING SKILL – A QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH AT VAN XUAN –

HOAI DUC HIGH SCHOOL

ÁP DỤNG CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC GHI CHÉP ĐỂ PHÁT TRIỂN

KĨ NĂNG NGHE CHO HỌC SINH TRUNG HỌC PHỔ THÔNG – NGHIÊN CỨU BÁN THỰC NGHIỆM TẠI TRƯỜNG THPT

VẠN XUÂN – HOÀI ĐỨC

M.A Minor Thesis

Field: English Methodology Code: 60.140.111

Supervisor: Trần Xuân Điệp, Assoc Prof Dr

HANOI – 2013

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DECLARATION

I, Phí Thị Bích, declare that the thesis entitled “Applying note-taking strategies to develop high school students‟ listening skill: A quasi-experimental research at Van Xuan – Hoai Duc high school” reports the result of the study conducted by myself The minor thesis is submitted to Department of Post-graduate studies, ULIS, Hanoi for Degree of Master in TESOL It has not been published anywhere

Phí Thị Bích

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost, I would like to send my sincere thanks to my supervisor, Assoc Prof Dr Trần Xuân Điệp, for his valuable guidance, helpful advice, recommendation, and encouragement during the time I tried to complete this minor thesis Without his supervision, this work would never have been possible

My deepest thanks also go to Ms Trịnh Thị Nhung – an English teacher at Van Xuan high school and her 40 students in class 12 D1 (2012 - 2013) who were so generous and willing to help me during six weeks of conducting my research

I would like to thank all the teachers of Post-Graduate Department for their valuable lectures, whose knowledge is the foundation for my thesis

Finally, I would like to express my biggest love and thanks to my family for their unconditional contributions during the time I conducted my research It was my parents and my husband who gave me the will to complete this challenging work

Phí Thị Bích

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ABSTRACT

The effectiveness of note-taking in listening comprehension was investigated in many previous studies This quasi-experimental study conducted upon forty students of class 12D1 at Van Xuan high school aimed at finding out the note-taking strategies used by high-school students, the difference in students‟ listening performance after using note-taking strategies as well as the students‟ opinion of applying note-taking strategies in listening lessons The results of pre-test, post-test and students questionnaire revealed that the use of note-taking strategies had facilitative effect on students‟ listening comprehension and high-school students appreciated the application of note-taking strategies in their listening lessons These findings could be used as relevant reference for further studies

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LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1: Factors influencing Listening Comprehension

Table 2: Background about participants

Table 3: The pre-test and post-test results of the two groups

Table 4: Descriptive statistics for the pre-test and post-test of control group and experimental group

Table 5: The relationship between experimental and control group‟s test scores Figure 1: The difference in gain values obtained by both groups after experiment Figure 2: Students‟ opinion of the importance of listening skill

Figure 3: Student‟s difficulties in studying listening skill

Figure 4: Students‟ frequency of noting down information while listening

Figure 5: Students‟ ways of note-taking while listening

Figure 6: The benefits of note-taking to students‟ listening

Figure 7: Students‟ opinion of the note-taking facilitative effect on listening comprehension

Figure 8: Factors affect students from taking good notes

Figure 9: Students‟ opinion of the application of note-taking in listening lessons Figure 10: Students‟ opinion to the teacher‟s help to get the best effect of note-

taking in listening lessons

Figure 11: Students‟ activities to improve their note-taking in listening lessons

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

EFL English as Foreign Language

ESL English as Second Language

SD Standard Deviation

SLA Second Language Acquisition

TOEFL Test of English as a Foreign Language

ULIS University of Language and International Studies VNU Vietnam National University

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TABLE OF CONTENT PAGE

Declaration i

Acknowledgement ii

Abstract iii

List of tables and figures iv

List of abbreviations v

Table of content vi

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale for the Research 1

2 Objectives of the Research 2

3 Research Questions 2

4 Scope of the Research 2

5 Significance of the Research 2

6 Design of the Research 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 3

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 3

1.1 Listening comprehension 4

1.1.1 The nature of listening comprehension 4

1.1.2 Listening comprehension process 6

1.1.3 Types of listening 7

1.1.4 Factors affects listening comprehension 8

1.1.5 Definition of note-takin 10

1.1.6 Note-taking methods 11

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1.2 Review of related works 14

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 14

2.1 Settings 14

2.2 Participants 14

2.3 Data collection methods 15

2.3.1 Pre-test 15

2.3.2 Post-test 16

2.3.3 Questionnaire for students 16

2.4 Data collection procedure 17

2.5 Data analysis methods

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CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 18

3.1 Research question 1: Do students of class 12D1 improve

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their listening performance in doing

listening comprehension tasks as measured by their test scores after using note-taking strategies? 3.2 Research question 2: What are students‟ opinions 27 and attitudes towards note-taking

and the application of note-taking

strategies in listening lessons?

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PART C: CONCLUSIONS 36

1 Recapitulation of main ideas 36

2 Limitations of the study 37

3 Recommendations for further studies 38

REFERENCES 39 APPENDICES I

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PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale for the Research

Listening clearly plays an important role in communication There has been a number of researchers who investigated the ways to improve listening skill for EFL learners Among those, the impact of note-taking was also investigated for a long time Crawford (1925) began his study in the 1920s, centering on whether note-taking could improve students‟ performance Over the years, researchers have tried

to verify that note-taking help students “encode” the information involved

Nowadays, it is very common for teachers to implement the note-taking strategies in the EFL listening class because they think that taking notes can help students catch the main points easily, so they can effectively promote their listening comprehension However, this situation causes some researchers‟ great concerns about whether taking notes is effective for students to enhance their listening comprehension or not Some researchers disagree with note-taking strategy because

of lack of vocabulary capacity (Lin 2004; Hsu, 2005); in addition, students cannot concentrate on the text because they have to spend much time on taking notes (Zheng, 1996; Lin, 2004); on the other hand, there are still some scholars who agree that note-taking can effectively promote students‟ listening comprehension because they think that students can pay more attention by the process of taking notes (Yeh, 2004), and students can recall the content of listening passages easily from their notes (Hale & Courtney, 1994)

Since the effects of note-taking strategies on students‟ listening comprehension is still a controversial issue, this study was conducted to apply note-taking strategies in listening lessons in class It aimed at finding out the effectiveness of note-taking on high school students‟ listening skill as well as the students‟ opinion of applying note-taking strategies at Van Xuan High school, Hanoi, Vietnam

2 Objectives of the research

This study was intended to investigate the followings:

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- the improvement in students‟ listening performance in doing listening comprehension tasks as designed in the textbook after practicing taking notes while listening; and

- students‟ opinion of note-taking strategies as well as the application of note-taking strategies in listening lessons

3 Research questions

The following questions were made to achieve the aims above:

1 Do students of class 12D1 improve their listening performance in doing listening comprehension tasks as measured by their test scores after using note-taking strategies?

2 What are students‟ opinions and attitudes towards note-taking and the application of note-taking strategies in listening lessons?

4 Scope of the research

The study cannot cover the whole issue of applying all note-taking strategies for high school students within the framework of a minor thesis Therefore it only puts emphasis on some note-taking strategies which are instructed to use while doing listening tasks designed in the textbook Furthermore, this study only focuses on

listening comprehension, not all aspects of listening skill

The number of participants of the research is only 40 They are students of class 12 D1 (2012 – 2013) who are at the same age and have the same total years of learning English – 9 years with the same curriculum

5 Significance of the research

This study will look at a number of issues These include the use of note-taking strategies in listening lessons, the students‟ attitudes towards and their perceptions

of note-taking strategies in the light of developing their listening skill, and the effect

of note-taking strategies on high school students‟ listening performance Therefore, the author hopes this research will be able to find out the strong points of note-

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taking strategies as well as the feasibility to apply them to teaching listening skill at high school in the future It could also be the suggestions and implications for other English teachers in Vietnam who are searching for the better ways to improve their students‟ listening skill

6 Design of the research

There are three main parts in this study, namely Introduction, Development, and Conclusions The Introduction begins with the rationale, objectives, research questions, scopes, signification, and the design of the study The second part includes three chapters namely Theoretical Background, Methodology, Findings and Discussions In the first chapter, Theoretical Background, presents definition of major terms used in this study, including overview of listening comprehension, types of listening comprehension, factors affect listening comprehension, overview

of note-taking strategies, note-taking methods; as well as the review of related works concerning advantages and disadvantages of note-taking, and the relationship between note-taking and listening comprehension The second chapter provides the methodology including settings, participants, data collection methods, data collection procedure, data analysis methods The findings and discussions are clearly presented in the next chapter which deals with three research questions The last part - Conclusions - includes the summary of the findings, implications, limitations and recommendations for further studies

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

To provide a theoretical background to the study, this chapter is devoted to the examination of concepts most relevant to the thesis‟s topic Firstly, the listening comprehension are presented with the definition, process, types of listening, and the factors affect listening comprehension Secondly, the writers review the theory of note-taking in terms of its definition and types Finally, some related studies are presented as the background for this study

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1.1 Listening comprehension

1.1.1 The nature of listening comprehension

Research has shown that listening is not a passive process, and it requires full participation and undivided attention of the learners Vandergrift (1999, p 168) rejected the treatment of listening comprehension as a passive skill and states:

“Listening comprehension is anything but a passive activity It is a complex, active process in which the listener must discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and grammatical structures, interpret stress and intonation, retain what was gathered in all of the above, and interpret it within the immediate as well as the large sociocultural content of the utterance Coordinating all of this involves a great deal of mental activity on the part of the listener Listening is hard work, and deserves more analysis and support”

According to Nation and Newton (2009, p.40), listening comprehension is an interactive process which requires the listeners to use top-down and bottom-up processing simultaneously While he/she is listening to a passage, the listener needs

to apply knowledge of sound, grammar, conversational mechanisms, cohesion, discourse structure, discourse type, and social relationships, all at the same time Previous researches have identified a number of factors as determinants of proficiency in a second or foreign language According to Richards and Schmidt (2002, p 313), listeners have to construct meaning by both linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge They are required to employ knowledge of words or lexical items, grammatical rules, and cognitive and social skills in order to negotiate an understanding of a passage or text Moreover, Morley (2001, p.74) proposes that listening comprehension involves both top-down and bottom-up process In top-down processing, learners are required to activate schematic knowledge and contextual knowledge while they are listening to the texts Schematic knowledge includes an activation of the content schemata, which is the background information

on the topic, and formal schemata, which is knowledge of how discourse is

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organized Contextual knowledge refers to an understanding of the specific listening

at hand like the knowledge about the participant, setting, and topic In a bottom-up process, prior knowledge of the language system such as phonology, grammar and vocabulary comes in to play a role Learners have to activate all kinds of knowledge required in order to be successful in listening process

Furthermore, Lian (1985, p 168) points out that listening comprehension is a dynamic process involving the interaction between itself and the text during which meanings are negotiated This means that listeners do not just extract or draw the meaning directly from the words or texts Rather, they have to create the meaning

by filtering the new information through their own accumulated experimental history, or socio-historical background The meaning created or constructed, therefore, will depend upon, and vary between each individual person Nunan (1991, p 9) also proposes that listening comprehension involves utilizing both bottom-up and top-down knowledge: “In comprehending aural language, listeners

do a great deal of constructive and interpretative work in which they integrate what they hear with what they know about the world.”

Goh (2005, p 64) mentions that listening comprehension is a very complex process which involves both linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic knowledge Linguistic knowledge includes phonology, lexis, syntax, semantics and discourse structure while non-linguistic knowledge as applied to listening comprehension involves knowledge about the topic, context, and general knowledge about the world and how it works She also states that these different types of knowledge do not occur in

a fixed sequence but are supposed to work simultaneously or in any convenient order while listeners receive and try to interpret the aural message coming into their ears Hedge (2000, p 235) says of listening comprehension:

“It would be mistaken to see top-down and bottom-up strategies as somehow in opposition It is now generally accepted that both function simultaneously and are mutually dependent The current model of listening is therefore an interactive one in which linguistic

1.1.2 Listening comprehension process

According to Brown (1994), the process of listening may be understood as the decoding an aural message and making sense of it He suggested that after the process of receiving sounds waves through the ears and transmitting nerve impulses

to the brain, the process of comprehension immediately takes place However, this

is a complex process which consists of three following stages:

Perception: Perception is the initial stage of comprehension in which the

hearer processes what is called “raw speech”, and holds its image in term memory This image consists of the constituents (phrases, clauses, cohesive markers, and intonation or stress patterns) of a stream of speech

short-Decoding: the second stage is decoding in which the hearer step by step:

 determines the type of speech event that is being processed

 infers the function of the message

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 brings a plausible interpretation to the message by recalling background information relevant to the particular context and subject matter

 assigns a literal meaning to the utterance

 assigns an intended meaning to the utterance

Recording for storage: After the hearer has successfully decoded the oral

input, the information is stored through the two following steps:

 the hearer determines whether information should be retained

in short-term or long-term memory Short-term memory is appropriate in contexts that simply call for a quick oral response from the hearer Long-term one is more common

when the hearer is processing information in a lecture

 The hearer deletes the original form of the message in 99 percent of speech acts Important information, if any, is

retained conceptually

To sum up, with the help of listening strategies, listeners construct meaning from the oral input by drawing upon their prior knowledge of the world and of the target language (Young, 1997) They also generate information on their long-term memory and make their own interpretation of the spoken texts (Mendelson, 1994) and fill in the gaps with logical guesses (Schmidt-Rinehart, 1994) Therefore, Brown (1994) claimed that both “bottom-up” and “top-down” processing play a crucial part in listening comprehension Listener may predict what is to be heard or anticipate what will occur next based on their existing knowledge

1.1.3 Types of listening

Real-life listening

Real-life listening is listening in daily life According to Anderson (1995), there are

two ways in which people listen in real-life They are casual and focused listening

categorized listening into intensive and extensive listening

Intensive listening is the careful, focused listening to a short passage for detailed

information or for full comprehension They may be much concrete information for this kind of listening and learners often find it difficult to get full comprehension in the first listening Therefore, intensive listening often gives students the challenge and helps them to develop listening skills or knowledge of the language in their effort to do exercises or other activities

Extensive listening is listening for pleasure and interest without having to pay much

attention to content and language Extensive listening keeps the students‟ motivation and interest high Students feel satisfied as they can understand the passage well Moreover, the topics are various and entertaining, which motivates students to develop their listening skills as well as exposes them to valuable extra contact with spoken language

1.1.4 Factors affect listening comprehension

Since listening is a complex active process in which learners decode and construct the meaning of the text by drawing on their previous knowledge about the world as well as their linguistic knowledge, there are many factors that affect listening comprehension Teng (1993) further divided these factors into a comprehensive list

as presented in the following table

4 Degree of pauses and redundancies

5 Prestige and personality

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5 Acoustic environment

D Context factors

1 Type of interactional event

2 Distraction during listening

3 Interval between listening and testing

of note-taking in the process of listening They proposed that there are two functions, encoding and external storage The encoding function refers to the process (or act) of note-taking According to the encoding function hypothesis, note-taking facilitates information processing The facilitative effect of the encoding function is revealed by comparing the performance of students who listen to a passage and take notes with the performance of those who listen but are not allowed

to take notes The external storage function refers to the fact that the notes taken can

Cornell method: The notes are written in the main space – the right-hand side

and label each idea and detail with a key word or “cue” in the left-hand space At the bottom of the page, the summary of notes is written By using this method, the information is well-organized and systematic for recording

or reviewing later This method is simple, easy to use, efficient, time and effort saving

Outline method: The information is written in an organized pattern based on

space indention To show the level of importance, note-takers use the distance from the major point and space relationships indicate major or minor point This is a well-organized system which records the content as well as the relationship It is most effective when note-taking skills are good

Mapping method: It is a graphic representation of the content The notes

begins in the middle of the page and the ideas are added by radiating branches from the centre idea or from previous branches All the ideas are expressed in key words Topic comes first, the sub-topic and next supporting details To show the links between parts of the map, note-takers use arrows and words This format helps learners to visually track the information they hear regardless of conditions Little thinking is needed and relationships can easily be seen It is also easy to edit notes by adding numbers, marks, and colour coding

Charting method: Note-takers record information (words, phrases, main

ideas, etc.) into the appropriate category This method helps track conversation and dialogues where learners would be confused and lose out

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on relevant content It also helps reduce the amount of writing necessary and provide easy review mechanism for both memorization of facts and study of comparisons and relationships This method can be used when the information focus on both facts and relationships, its content is heavy and presented fast, and when the note-takers want to reduce the amount of time editing and reviewing

Sentence method: Note-takers write every new thought, fact, or topic on a

separate line, numbering as they progress The advantage of using this method is that the note-takers get more or all of the information However, they cannot determine major and minor points from the numbered sequence

It is difficult to edit the notes without having to rewrite them Learners can hear different points, but they do not know how they fit together

1.2 Review of related works

A number of previous studies looked at the advantages and disadvantages of taking strategies Lin (2005), Yeh (2004), Hall & Courtly (1994) agreed on the advantages of note-taking in terms of helping college students concentrate more on the content as well as recall the content of listening materials easily

note-On the other hand, Lin (2004), Hsu (2005) investigated effect of note-taking on college students and they found that note-taking could not enhance students‟ listening skill due to their lack of vocabulary capacity Zheng (1996) and Lin (2004) agreed on the negative effect of note-taking on college students‟ listening comprehension performance Taking notes distracted students from concentrating

on the content of listening passages

A number of other studies looked at the relationship between note-taking strategies and listening comprehension Some studies investigated the positive effect of note-taking strategies on listening comprehension These studies were conducted by; Zhou and Gou (2007); Kiewra (1989); Liu, B and Hu, Y (2012) They found that

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note-taking did facilitate college and lower-intermediate level EFL learners‟ listening comprehension (Carrell, Dunkel and Mollaun, 2004; Liu, B and Hu, Y., 2012) However, the performance level of note-taking depended on the length and the topic of listening passages Note-taking was more beneficial in answering general questions rather than the detailed ones (Zhou and Gou, 2007) Kiewra (1989) claimed that note-taking promoted listening comprehension thanks to its external repository of information which permitted later revision and review to stimulate recall of the information in listening passages

In contrast, other scholars found no positive effect of note-taking strategies on listening comprehension including Dunkel, 1985; Hale and Courtley, 1994 They investigated effect of note-taking on EFL listening comprehension and in the context of TOEFL test They failed to find positive effect of note-taking

In conclusion, by reviewing related studies, it is clear that there is still no common theoretical background for the widely-held belief that note-taking is facilitative to listening comprehension The effectiveness of note-taking strategies on listening comprehension still needed further investigation In addition, these above previous studies on note-taking were conducted upon college students It was of great concern to conduct studies upon high-school students Therefore, this study was conducted upon students at Van Xuan – Hoai Duc high school in Hanoi, Vietnam to apply note-taking strategies to improve students‟ listening skills

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CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 2.1 Settings

This quasi-experimental study was conducted at Van Xuan – Hoai Duc high school

in the suburb of Hanoi It is a public school which was founded twelve years ago with thirty-six classes of three grades 10th, 11th and 12th The students of classes from A1 to A10 of each grade have three English lessons every week For classes from D1 to D3 of each grade, they have one more selective English lesson every week The textbook used for teaching is the new Tieng Anh 10, 11, 12 at basic level

The teachers at Van Xuan high school are at the age ranging from thirty to forty years old who are experienced and enthusiastic in teaching They are eager to enhance the teaching skills and their students‟ performance However, they find out that the most challenging skill among four basic skills is listening skill They always hope to improve their students‟ listening comprehension

The students come from villages in Hoai Duc district They are chosen by passing the tenth grade entrance exam with the score of over 30 points, which is ranked at the medium in comparison with other schools in Hanoi The students have the same years of learning English with the same curriculum and textbook

2.2 Participants

The study was conducted upon forty students of class 12D1 (2012 - 2013) within three months of the second semester from January 28th to April 29th, 2013 There were thirty-four girls and only six boys They were at the same age of eighteen and had the same total year of learning English with the same curriculum from primary school to high school Their academic performance in social science subjects was better than ones in natural science subjects They were interested in learning English Each week, they had three English lessons as other classes and one more selective lesson In total, they had four English lessons every week Of all four skills: reading, speaking, listening, and writing, the most challenging for them is

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listening skill They really hoped to improve their listening skill In the study, they were divided into two groups of twenty students in each group One group was the control group and the other was the experimental group The following table presents main background information about participants including gender, age, and their English proficiency level

Experimental Group Control Group Total number of

Pre-intermediate Pre-intermediate Pre-intermediate

Table 2: Background about the participants 2.3 Data collection methods

In an attempt to achieve the aims of the research, a quasi-experimental research was mainly used as an appropriate approach to establish the cause-effect relationship between note-taking strategies and high-school students‟ listening comprehension

In order to collect the data for analysis, there were three data collection instruments employed including pre-test, post-test and students‟ questionnaires

2.3.1 Pre-test

The pre-test was designed to identify the language proficiency level of the two groups: control and experimental group The purpose of the pre-test was to define whether there was statistically significant difference between the language

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performance of the experimental group and the control group before the treatment The total number of questions in the pre-test was ten and fell into two categories: five multiple choice questions and five detailed questions in which students had to fill in the blanks with the appropriate words or numbers The question types used in the pre-test were familiar to the students

2.3.2 Post-test

The post-test was designed to determine the students‟ listening performance of the two groups after three-month treatment The question types were still multiple choice questions and detailed questions The number of questions was the same as the pre-test, which was ten questions The difficult level of the post-test was relatively higher than the pre-test To ensure the objectiveness, the marking for the post-test was carried out by another teacher who did not involve in this study

2.3.3 Questionnaire for students

In order to find out the student‟s attitudes towards note-taking strategies in terms of improving their listening comprehension, the written questionnaire was designed to collect the experimental students‟ attitudes towards note-taking strategies and the application of note-taking strategies in listening lessons There were ten question items falling into three different sections, namely overview of listening skills and problems; perspectives of note-taking; and attitudes towards the application of note-taking in listening lessons The question types were raking questions and multiple choice questions in both types: closed-ended type which can choose more than one option and open-ended type The reason for choosing these two types of questions was that the researcher could collect both controlled information as well as students‟ personal opinions towards the issue of note-taking at the same time The questionnaire was carefully explained in Vietnamese for all the respondents while answering to make sure that they did not have any language problems in understanding every statement item

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2.4 Data collection procedure

The research was conducted within three months of the second semester in the academic year 2012 – 2013 upon the class 12D1 For the first class meeting, the researcher delivered the pre-test for all of the students and asked them to do the test Based on the pre-test results, the researcher identified any differences in the pre-test score between the two groups (experimental and control group) After that, the researcher instructed twenty students of experimental group to use note-taking strategies in listening lessons for over two months Only experimental group were instructed the note-taking strategies and had an opportunity to practice taking notes

in listening lessons and weekly selective lessons The note-taking strategies used in this study were the use of abbreviations, symbols, notations, shorthand forms of the words, etc The researcher also taught the experimental students Cornell and Outlining methods of note taking The experiment continued for over two months Right after the treatment was over, post-test was administered to both groups to measure their listening performance as the result of the treatment Based on the post-test results, the researcher identified the differences in post-test scores between the two groups

2.5 Data analysis methods

When the data collection was accomplished, the data analysis was initiated The pre-tests, post-tests were scored and analysed by using Excel application The results were demonstrated in tables with detailed explanation

For the students‟ questionnaires, they were collected and analysed by means of descriptive statistics After that, they were processed in Excel application and then presented in the forms of tables, charts, or diagrams Additionally, some pictures were used as illustrations with analysis to complement findings from questionnaires

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CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

This chapter is a detailed presentation of the major findings of the study It is presented based on each research question, in which the results are shown with figures and explanation

After three months under treatment, students of experimental group had a chance to practice note-taking strategies while listening and doing listening comprehension task By reviewing their notes, a number of striking features of using note-taking strategies in both intensive listening tasks in the textbook of unit 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15; and the extensive listening activities designed by the teacher in selective lessons clearly revealed

First, the majority of students in experimental group used abbreviations, symbols, notations to take notes They mainly used the abbreviations and symbols as follows:

 as a result of / consequences of < ->

 resulting in/ in conclusion ->

 and / also +/ &

or “were”; or unnecessary articles “a”, “an” or “the” In their notes, only key words, content words, numbers and the arrows to connect the ideas as well as the indentation to show the different level of importance

Among the two strategies Cornell and Outlining method of note-taking, students were more familiar with using the Cornell method because this method was simple and effective It helped students save time and effort Many of them avoided using Outlining method to take notes since this method required more thought and close attention for accurate structure

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All in all, there were a number of note-taking strategies which high-school students used in their listening lessons These strategies included the use of abbreviations, symbols and shorthand form of the words; the omission of unimportant words or unnecessary articles; the use of key words and content words; the different indentation to show different level of importance Moreover, the Cornell method was better than Outlining method for high-school students to take notes because it was easier for students to write down and arrange the information

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3.1 Research Question 1: Do students of class 12D1 improve their listening performance in doing listening comprehension tasks as measured by their test scores after using note-taking strategies?

In terms of quantitative analysis, the data collected from the pre-test and post-test score were used to identify any improvement in students‟ listening performance after the experimental period

TEST RESULTS

No pre-test post-test gain pre-test post-test gain

Table 3: The pre-test and post-test results of the two groups

This table presents the results of students‟ listening performance in the pre-test and post-test within and between the experimental and control group It clearly revealed that the results of post-test score of the two groups were slightly higher than those

of the pre-test The following table summarizes some significant descriptive statistics of the results collected by two groups after three-month experimental period

Descriptive statistics control group (N = 20) Experimental group (N= 20)

Pre-test Post-test Pre-test Post-test

Based on the pre-test and postest score of the two groups, the researcher used a test to compare the two groups to see if the treatment actually brought about any difference in students‟ listening performance

t-PRE_EXPERIMENT Control group Experimental group