Note taking in English lectures: A study of Omani EFL university students

Note Taking (NT), also Note-Taking or Note-Making, while listening (or from lectures) is one of the most widespread and frequent activities among students at universities and colleges in any field of study. In EFL classes, in spite of the common use of NT from lectures, this skill is sometimes regarded as passive and secondary to learning. This study is an investigation of some aspects related to the way Omani EFL university students at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) take notes during lectures delivered in English as well as the effectiveness of these notes, i.e. the usefulness of these notes in capturing the important information in lectures. Training in NT is also addressed in this study. Two groups of students were involved in this study: an experimental and a control group. The former group was involved in an intensive two-hour NT workshop after which their notes of a lecture were compared with previous notes taken before the workshop to study the changes in the NT strategies used. In contrast, the control group did not participate in the NT training; their notes were merely compared with those of the experimental group to study the NT strategies used by the two groups. This investigation involves the study of both qualitative and quantitative data taken from the students' lecture notes. In addition to studying the sample's notes, interviews and questionnaires were used to learn about the students' experience in NI and their opinions and attitudes regarding their NI skills by questioning their purpose of NI, the methods they use to take notes, and the factors they believe affect NT. Results indicate that the sample's lecture notes are effective reproductions of the important information in the lectures they attended, for a good number of students were able to record more than 'one-third' of the important information units in the lectures which is what Hartley and Cameron (1967), among others, consider a 'reasonable' and 'generous' amount to expect to find in lecture notes. Also, simple training in NT was found to help students improve their NT strategies and habits