Listening To Take Good Notes: Hearing is a spontaneous act. Listening, by contrast, is something you choose to do. Listening requires you not only to hear what has been said but to understand as well. Understanding requires three activities: dynamic listening; paying attention, concentration The best way to concentrate is to start with anticipation. Review your notes from the last lecture and make sure you go to class having read the assigned material. Use this method to cultivate a mindset that is needed for 100% concentration during a lecture. Be a comprehensive listener! Comprehensive listening has to do with the feedback between speaker and listener. The speaker has an obligation to make his/her words comprehensible to the listener. The listener, in turn, must let the speaker know when he/she does not understand. Both parties must make a conscious effort to accept their individual responsibilities. You may think this is a 50/50 proposition, which in part it is; however, both parties must be willing to give a 100% for effective listening comprehension to be achieved. The best way for you to let the speaker know that you don't understand is to ask questions. A surprising number of students are too embarrassed to ask questions. The only dumb question is the one that goes unasked. Twelve Guidelines to Effective Listening: •Sit where the instructor will always see you, preferably in the front. •Pay attention to content, not the lecturer's appearance or distracting habits. Judge the material, not the delivery. •Put aside emotional concerns. If you disagree with what is being said, hold your judgement or fire until after class, then see the instructor. •Find areas of interest; listen for ideas, not just facts, and words; put new ideas to work during the lecture by using your imagination. •Intend to get down a good written record of the lecture material; be a flexible note taker. •Listen for new rods and watch for signals of important information; listen for examples the instructor provides to define or illustrate main ideas. Note these examples with "EX" in your notes or textbook. •Read in advance about the topics to be discussed in class and relate them to something you care about. •Exercise your mind with challenging material; keep your mind open even if you hear emotional words. •Be prepared to ask questions in class. Use facial expressions to let the instructor know that you don't understand an idea completely or you would like the information repeated. •Don't stop listening or taking notes during discussion periods or toward the end of the lecture until the instructor concludes. •Work at listening instead of pretending to listen. •Resist external distractions such as someone coming in late to class, a pager going off, maintenance mowing the grass, other students talking.

Two experiments were conducted in which subjects listened to a passage divided into six segments of 5 minutes each. Manipulations were made of thematic relatedness of content, listen-study intervals, and note taking. More ideas were recalled when note taking was not permitted and when the material was on different topics or unconnected than when the material was on the same topic and/or connected. These effects were noted especially on a delayed-recall test administered 1 week following the listening period. No significant effects due to variations in listen-study intervals were found. The hypothesis that note taking is beneficial for subjects with high memory span but not for subjects with low memory span was provided some support. The results were interpreted in terms of less interference in discontinuous themes than in continuous themes. Implications of the study for further research on note taking were discussed.

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