ELT365 · Day 170 — Note-Taking During Listening: A Trainable Skill

Idea — Note-taking while listening is cognitively demanding because decoding and writing compete for working-memory resources. Training learners to use symbols and abbreviations reduces that load.

Example — Instead of writing sentences, a learner uses “→” for “causes,” “≠” for “differs from,” and “govt” for “government.”

Try — Teach five abbreviation symbols. Play a 90-second clip. Learners take notes using only those symbols. Compare notes in pairs.

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