Korean EFL Students’ Perceptions on Note-taking Strategy and Its Training in Academic English Listening Tests

The current study examined Korean college students’ perceptions on the effects of note-taking and its training. A total 92 college students were randomly assigned to one of the three groups: (A) training group which was allowed to take notes during the test, (B) no-training group which was allowed to take notes during the test, and (C) no-training group which was not allowed to take notes during the test. Three different sets of mini iBT TOEFL tests, questionnaire surveys (before and after the training), strategy training (in three different periods), and interviews (9 students) were conducted. The results indicated that note-taking and note-taking strategy training did affect the trained group’s test performance, and its effect was not statistically significant. Most students perceived the necessity or importance of notetaking and its training, whether they were allowed to take them or not. There was also some discrepancy between the students’ perception of note-taking and their actual use of note-taking; the students did not take notes although they talked about the virtue of taking notes. The present study is significant in that it addressed the various perceptions and aspects of the note-taking and the training in an EFL context of Korea through quantitative and qualitative approaches.