In this final chapter, the summary of the findings in this research is described in the first section. The second section provides the pedagogical implication for instructors. The final section reveals limitations of this research and provides suggestions for further studies.
Summary
The purpose of this research was to examine the effects of note-taking activities on college students’ English listening abilities, to discover which of the two types of note-taking activities was more effective for students, and to find out students’ attitudes and reaction toward note-taking activities. There were totally 116 college students from a southern university in Taiwan divided into three proficiency levels to participate in this experiment. The researcher randomly selected class A (60 students) to practice
note-taking activities with a formal style (NTF) and class B (56 students) to practice note-taking activities with personal styles (NTP). There were altogether 8 note-taking activities, each lasting about 2 minutes, for students to practice their listening
comprehension with two different styles of note-taking. These eight note-taking activities were excerpts from the textbook Interaction 1 which was designed for college freshmen.
Besides, the researcher utilized three questionnaires to investigate students’ opinions toward note-taking activities.
To begin with, the results showed that only the high proficiency group improved their listening abilities. As for the other two groups, intermediate and low groups, they
did not improve significantly their listening scores. After the experiment, more students thought note-taking activities were helpful on their listening performance. Hence, it showed that note-taking activities not only helped these advanced students to actually perform better on the English listening post-test but also improved students’ attitudes toward listening by approximately 5.5 percent.
Second, students with high proficiency who received NTF performed significantly better in the post-test, but the other two proficiency groups did not. On the other hand, two proficiency groups in NTP, high and intermediate, improved significantly their listening performance; only the low proficiency group did not.
Third, the analysis showed students used the four strategies frequently in the process of note-taking activities were selective attention, extralinguistic inferencing,
summarization and translation. The finding of this study revealed that there were five main difficulties occurring frequently during participants’ listening processes: the speed of delivery, familiarity with the listening content, articulators’ accents, vocabulary, and personal listening ability.
Pedagogical Implications
According to the findings of this study, there are four pedagogical implications. First of all, teachers should provide more opportunities for students to become familiar with the note-taking skill and thereby improve their listening abilities, especially for low achievers. Thus, there is a necessity for low proficiency level students to have a longer period of time to gradually enhance their listening abilities. In the future, English teachers should offer more time for students to practice note-taking activities.
Second, in response to the implication mentioned in the previous paragraph, teachers
could provide a more effective type or combine several types of listening strategy activities for students. The findings of this study indicate English teachers should encourage learners to take notes in their personal styles, and each student finds their appropriate methods such as using diverse symbols and abbreviations during the listening process. Because in accordance with the finding, NTP could benefit a wider range of students with high and intermediate proficiency.
Third, an appropriate topic could help students concentrate and make a connection with their prior knowledge. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, 59 students stated that one of the listening difficulties they faced was the familiarity with the listening content. Hence, different listening topics should be utilized by teachers to inspire students to connect with their prior knowledge. For instance, the researcher of this study offered several activities with different topics such as shopping and issues of daily life to train students’ listening abilities.
Fourth, the findings of this study indicated that note-taking activities required learners to use different listening strategies during the process, which implied that English learners utilized more than one strategy in listening. Besides, the result of the questionnaires also showed that four strategies were frequently used in completing the activities, such as selective attention, extralinguistic interferencing, summarization and translation. Hence, making connection among these strategies will play an important role in English listening.
Limitations of this Study and Suggestions for Further Studies In this study, limitations occurred during the experiment, and the researcher thought these limitations could be avoided in further studies.
First of all, it will be necessary to provide more activities that involve sufficient topics for students. The textbook, Interactions 1, contains totally ten note-taking activities for listeners, but two of them were utilized respectively as the pilot study and the
listening comprehension test. Therefore, only eight activities can be used in the formal study. Even though students with low proficiency improved their attitudes after practicing the eight activities, they did not improve significantly their listening abilities. For low proficiency groups, more activities should be provided.
Second, the limitation of time might be one of the main factors affecting the results of this study. It took the researcher ten weeks to conduct this experiment, but the
exposure of time to each English listening training was approximately 2 minutes, which was too short. Even if some students significantly improved their listening abilities, more of them can probably enhance their listening abilities if they participated in this study for a longer period of time.
Third, the activities should be accompanied with a note-taking instruction for learners. In the beginning, the researcher of this study planned to offer a note-taking instruction for students to learn this listening strategy. However, the researcher was unable to get more time from participants’ class teacher to do the experiment. Therefore, the researcher suggests that a well designed note-taking instruction for students might bring better effects on their listening abilities.
Fourth, the design of the questionnaires is insufficient to discover more details toward note-taking activities. As for the questionnaires, the researcher referred to Lin’s (2005) version and then modified the content for this study. Nevertheless, in this study, the three questionnaires were not revised appropriately and logically to focus on students’
feedback.
Hence, for further studies aiming to discover the effect of listening strategies, researchers should try their best to eliminate these limitations to achieve a more satisfying result.
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