The Effects of Note-Taking Skills Instruction on Elementary ...

The Effects of Note-Taking SkillsInstruction on Elementary

Students’ ReadingWAN-CHEN CHANG

YU-MIN KUNational Central University, Taiwan

ABSTRACT. The authors investigated the effects of a 5-week note-taking skills instructional program on note-takingand reading comprehension performance of elementary stu-dents. The participants included 349 fourth-grade studentsfrom 2 elementary schools in Taiwan. The Note-TakingInstruction group received approximately 40 min of note-taking skills instruction per week for 5 weeks in contrast tothe free note-taking group and the free-recall writing groupwho did not receive any instruction. A note-taking evalua-tion task and a comprehension test were used to evaluate theeffectiveness of the instruction on students’ performance innote taking and reading comprehension, respectively. Thestudy yielded 2 findings: first, teaching students a note-tak-ing strategy significantly improved their performance in notetaking and reading comprehension, and second, poor readersshowed the greatest gains in note-taking skills withinstruction.

Keywords: note-taking, reading strategies, strategyinstruction

R eading is generally viewed as crucial and funda-mental to learning. Studies have shown thatreaders are consciously aware of the reading strat-

egies they use in the reading process. This use of readingstrategies is linked to success in reading comprehension.Note taking, the emphasis of the present study, is a reader-initiated strategy (Cook & Mayer, 1983), and is believedto be an effective strategy for improving students readingcomprehension and learning. Many studies have foundthat note takers outperform non–note takers in readingcomprehension. This advantage is attributed to note tak-ing helping learners retain retention and make connec-tions among pieces of information in the text. In the lasthalf a century, note-taking research has been primarilyconcerned with three aspects. First, the effects of note tak-ing on cognitive variables such as attention, memory andcomprehension (Faber, Morris, & Lieberman, 2000; Piolat,Olive, & Kellogg, 2005; Slotte & Lonka, 1999) have beenexamined. Second, researchers have explored the

relationship between the quality of notes and the implica-tions for learning (e.g., Boyle, 2010; Rahmani & Sadeghi,2011; Slotte & Lonka, 1999). Finally, there has been anincreasing interest in integrating technology-basedapproaches in note-taking instruction (e.g., Glover, Xu, &Hardaker, 2007; Hoff, Wehling, & Rothkugel, 2009).There are two areas of interest related to note-taking

instruction. First, note-taking instruction primarily focuseson teaching students how to take notes during lectures(e.g., Kiewra, 1987; Kobayashi, 2005; P. L. Lee, Lan,Hamman, & Hendricks, 2008; Titsworth & Kiewra, 2004),which also encourages students to pay close attention tothe lectures (Bauer & Koedinger, 2006). Second, note tak-ing is regarded as a rather spontaneous learning strategy,more commonly used by older students. Therefore, mostnote-taking instructional programs are designed to cater tothe needs of high school and college students (e.g., Austin,Lee, & Carr, 2004; Davis & Hult, 1997; Santa, Abrams, &Santa, 1979; Shrager & Mayer, 1989; Van Meter, Yokoi,& Pressley, 1994).However, instruction regarding note taking while read-

ing is difficult to find and few research efforts haveattempted to provide a comprehensive note-taking strategyfor children. Note-taking strategies used during readingand for a lecture are significantly different in terms ofintention and function. We posit that if students couldintegrate a note-taking strategy into their reading strate-gies, their reading comprehension would be improved,because of having more opportunities to organize informa-tion. Hence, teaching students how to take notes whilereading, an underresearched area, is of central interest.There is a need for explicit instruction in note-taking

strategies. Students must be prompted to incorporate usefullearning strategies. The reading skills of less proficient

Address correspondence to Yu-Min Ku, National Central University,Graduate Institute of Learning and Instruction, No. 300, Jhongda Rd.,Jhongli City, Taoyuan County 32001, Taiwan. (E-mail: [email protected])

The Journal of Educational Research, 108:278–291, 2015

Copyright � Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 0022-0671 print / 1940-0675 online

DOI:10.1080/00220671.2014.886175

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readers can be enhanced through teaching reading strate-gies (Lau, 2006; Lau & Chan, 2003; Magliano, Trabasso,& Graesser, 1999; Pressley, 2002; Samuelstuen & Braten,2005). Note-taking instruction has been given less atten-tion than other reading strategies. We assume that thereare two reasons for this: (a) the ability to take notes is oftenregarded as a skill that students naturally possess or sponta-neously acquire, and thus there is no perceived need toteach note-taking skills, and (b) teachers often provideorganized notes for students to copy as this is more timeefficient. In the classroom, it is common to observe a situa-tion where the teacher simply writes important informa-tion on the blackboard and asks students to copy it intotheir notebooks without any instruction on how to takenotes. Accordingly, the aim is to develop a note-takinginstruction that is well suited to improving the note-takingperformance and reading comprehension of elementarystudents.

The Influence of Note Taking on Learning Performance

Previous studies have noted that there is a high degree ofcorrelation between whether learners incorporate readingcomprehension strategies and the extent to which theycomprehend reading materials (Lau, 2006; Lau & Chan,2003; Magliano et al., 1999; Pressley, 2002; Samuelstuen& Braten, 2005). Student-initiated reading strategies havealso been found to improve academic performance in vari-ous subject areas (P. L. Lee et al., 2008; Slotte & Lonka,1999). In a large majority of cases, note taking impliescomprehension and written production. The process andthe product of note taking have been found to yield learn-ing benefits (Kiewra, 1989; Kiewra et al., 1991; Kobayashi,2005).

There is strong evidence indicating that note taking canpositively impact student learning performance, such asreading comprehension, recall, and retention (Kiewra,Benton, Kim, Risch, & Christensen, 1995; Kneale, 1998;Laidlaw, Skok, & McLaughlin, 1993; Spires & Stone,1989). This is because the process of writing it down helpsnote takers comprehend the information and store it intheir long-term memory (Piolat et al., 2005). From a cog-nitive perspective, students are better able to analyze tex-tual information in depth, distinguish between mainconcepts and secondary ideas, and meaningfully integratereading material with relevant prior knowledge during thenote-taking process. Hence, note taking helps studentsdevelop coherent outlines of text and better organize infor-mation. It thus serves as a constructive process in reading(Cook & Mayer, 1983).

The challenge is that students generally take incompletenotes and may only include a small percentage of the criti-cal ideas included in the lectures. However, to succeed aca-demically, students must possess effective note-takingskills. To produce good notes, students should includeorganized textual information, present the information in

a format that is different from the original text, andembrace the note taker’s critical thinking skills (Faberet al., 2000; Piolat et al., 2005; Slotte & Lonka, 1999).However, as many students are poor note takers (Kiewra,1985, 1987, 1989), they are unable to enjoy the full bene-fits of the process, because they often miss important ideas.Appropriate note-taking instruction is necessary in orderto help students to achieve maximal learning performance.

The Importance of Note-Taking Instruction

The note-taking instruction not only helps studentsimprove reading ability and enhance their recall and com-prehension, but also benefits low-ability students morethan high-ability students. As mentioned previously, note-taking instruction studies have focused on older students—those in high school or college—because note taking isregarded as a common practice for test preparation amongolder students. For instance, both ninth-grade students inthe study of Faber et al. (2000) and undergraduate studentsin the study of Rahmani and Sadeghi (2011) enhancedtheir recall and comprehension with training on note tak-ing, demonstrating the effectiveness of instruction.However, the benefits of note taking for lower ability

students appear to be higher than for higher ability stu-dents (e.g., Boyle, 2010; Boyle & Weishaar, 2001; Faberet al., 2000; Peper & Mayer, 1978). There have beennumerous studies in which have examined the effective-ness of note-taking performance after lower ability studentshave received instruction. Kobayashi (2005, 2006) showedthrough meta-analysis that whether the note takinginvolved information conveyed by lecture or text, lowerlevel students in Grades 9–12 showed significantly greateracademic gains than did the higher level students in thesame grades. The same findings were echoed in the studyby Boyle (2010), who trained students with learning dis-abilities, and that of Shrager and Mayer (1989) who com-pared learners with low and high levels of prior knowledge.Taken together, results show that note-taking instructionincreases the levels of free recall, scores on comprehensiontests, enhances problem solving and helps students learn toinclude more relevant ideas.There have been few studies on note-taking instruction

for younger students, and the effect of such instruction inthe reading context has been overlooked. Laidlaw et al.(1993) taught fifth- and sixth-grade students mixed readingstrategies, and note-taking and self-questioning strategies,but could not say whether their progress in quiz perfor-mance in science could be attributed to note taking only.P. L. Lee et al. (2008) taught note-taking strategies to stu-dents as young as Grade 3 and found this to have a positiveimpact on science learning; however, their study focusedon note taking from a videotaped lecture rather thanreading.It has been suggested that student achievement

improves when students become more actively engage in

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the learning activity. That is, they perform better on mate-rial they generate themselves than they do on material cre-ated by others (H. W. Lee, Lim, & Grabowski, 2007). Thissuggests that students should be given opportunities topractice taking their own notes. While note-taking model-ing by teachers is an important element of the instruction,relying solely on teachers’ notes may obstruct or hinder thestudents’ learning with respect to developing their owneffective note-taking skills (Kiewra, 1989). Slotte andLonka (1999) provided some suggestions regarding prop-erly designed instruction based on their research results.They noted that students should be aware of various note-taking skills and be able to determine which skill best fitsthe information. However, while some teachers instructstudents on note-taking strategies, the teaching is oftennonsystematic and sporadic. Educators often prepare vari-ous printed notes as an aid for poor note takers, that weconsidered as external assistants, such as questions guides(Boyle, 2010), note-taking worksheets (Konrad, Joseph, &Eveleigh, 2009; P. L. Lee et al., 2008), and graphic organiz-ers (Rahmani & Sadeghi, 2011). According to the abovestudies and a meta-review on guided notes (Konrad et al.,2009), when teachers provide guide notes for students,they are also providing students with a model that can beused for taking more accurate and complete notes on theirown. However, we are not sure whether the effect of exter-nal aids persists when they are removed.

In the present study we proposed that students mustlearn how to incorporate note-taking skills independently,without the use of external aids, so that they can applythese note-taking skills to other subjects. For example,according to the meta-analysis conducted by Kobayashi(2005), the note-taking group performed better than thenon–note-taking group only when they received positiveor neutral instruction. Thus, another goal of this study wasto design an appropriate note-taking instruction.

Three Essential Features of Useful Notes

There is thus a relationship between student notes, stu-dent comprehension, and recall performance so thereshould be a clear definition of useful notes. Notes, histori-cally, have been assessed or analyzed according to theirquantity (e.g., the number of concepts and words), quality(e.g., organizational structure), and representation (e.g.,symbols). These three essential features were regarded asthe basis for data analysis and instructional design in thepresent study.

Quantity is measured based on the number of conceptsor words present in the notes. Studies have found that thenumber of words or concept units in notes is positivelyrelated to test performance (e.g., Boyle, 2010; Rahmani &Sadeghi, 2011; Slotte & Lonka, 1999). Differences in thenumber are reflective of the varied abilities of the studentsin that good readers take more notes than poor readers.Garcia-Mila and Andersen (2007) compared children’s

and adults’ note-taking performance. The participantswere free to choose whether to take notes or not. Theresults showed that the adults not only wrote more notesthan the children, but also were more willing to take notes.This suggests that the adults had a higher awareness of theneed and the potential value of note taking. Rahmani andSadeghi (2011) studied students who received note-takinginstruction and found that they wrote more words and keyideas than did the control group. Thus, the performance ofgood note takers may be reflected in the quantity of thenotes with respect to the number of words and importantconcepts.Quality reinforces that the most important aspects of

note taking are establishing connections and organizingrelated information, and gaining productive knowledgeregarding the various concepts. Good note takers tend toproduce effective notes that are related to what theyalready know (Faber et al., 2000; Piolat et al., 2005).Accordingly, they organize and evaluate informationacross different paragraphs and text segments or, based ontheir prior knowledge, use graphs, charts or concept mapsto the same effect (Piolat et al., 2005; Slotte & Lonka,1999). By integrating information, they improve learningand memory. Clearly, the note-taking process is a sophisti-cated, rather than a mechanical, behavior that improveswith practice.Representation indicates that one aspect of useful notes

is that their representation differs from that of the originalsource. To increase speed when taking notes, it is necessaryto condense the original information. Different steno-graphic styles can be used to represent the information.Piolat et al.’s (2005) analysis of the structure of notesrevealed that using different techniques to condense infor-mation might affect three levels of language: abbreviatinglexical units, transforming syntax, and physically format-ting text. Abbreviating lexical units is a means of applyinglexical units or transferring them from one language toanother. Transformed syntax refers to the recording of theinformation in a telegraphic style, such as mathematicalsymbols (C, ¡). Physical formatting refers to means ofexploiting the physical space in a nonlinear way.During note taking, students use summarizing, concep-

tual mapping, and other reorganizational methods toenhance textual comprehension as they interpret informa-tion and rewrite it in their own words, incorporating priorknowledge as they do so (Slotte & Lonka, 1999). In con-trast, taking notes by copying the text verbatim interfereswith deeper processing of the information. Students benefitfrom having more complete and more personally meaning-ful notes (Kiewra, 1985).To sum up, when note takers are actively engaged in

the note-taking activity, their notes should demonstratethe following characteristics: extracting the conceptswith critical thinking, reorganizing text information,and applying different representations from theoriginal text.

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The Present Study

The main purpose of this study is to develop a series ofnote-taking instructional materials to enhance elementarystudents’ note-taking skills, and to further examine theeffect of note taking on reading comprehension. In thisstudy, the instructions are designed for fourth-grade stu-dents based on their note-taking behaviors prior to instruc-tion. Then, the effects of note-taking instruction onlearning and reading comprehension are evaluated usingpre- and posttests. In addition, we also attempt to teach anote-taking strategy that students can internalize and usespontaneously, rather than to provide external assistance,such as graphic organizers, worksheets, or printed notes.This study extends the existing note-taking studies to theelementary school level and revises one methodologicalproblem regarding the analysis of note-taking performance.In the process, we question the appropriateness of calculat-ing the number of words and concepts as a measure ofnote-taking skill.

Previous studies have concentrated on the relationshipbetween note-taking performance and cognitive variablessuch as attention, memory and prior knowledge (Castell�o& Monereo, 2005). Here, the understanding of the rela-tionship between reading ability and note-taking perfor-mance is expanded.

The specific research questions addressed include thefollowing:

Research Question 1: What is the effect of the note-takinginstruction on the performance of students’ note takingand reading comprehension?

Research Question 2: What is the appropriate criterion forevaluating the students’ note-taking performance?

Method

Participants

The participants were 349 fourth-grade students from 12different classes in two elementary schools. Fourth-gradestudents were chosen because they are entering the stageof reading to learn (Chall, 1996). Thus, they are expectedto encounter many conceptually demanding informationaltexts. We posited that teaching students how to employ areading strategy should help improve their reading compre-hension. The elementary schools were located in a lowermiddle-class area in Taoyuan, Taiwan. The following crite-ria were used for the selection of participants: (a) studentswhose score on the Test of Reading Comprehension(TRC; Lin & Chi, 2002) were 2 standard deviations belowthe mean were excluded, and there were 35 students whofitted this criterion and were excluded from the study; (b)students who did not complete the instructional courses orthe post–note-taking evaluation task were excluded. Basedon this criterion, 26 students were excluded from the study.

In all, 349 students of the 410 in the original sample wereincluded in the analyses.

Teachers

Twelve teachers were recruited to participate on a vol-unteer basis. All of the teachers had more than 5 years’teaching experience and had participated in the readingprogram in their schools.

Experimental Design

A 3 (Treatment Condition) £ 2 (Reading Ability) qua-siexperimental design was used in the experiments. Thefirst factor is treatment group which had three levels: (a) thenote-taking instruction (NTI) group, (b) the free note tak-ing without instruction (FNT) group, and (c) the free-recall writing (FRW) group. The classes were randomlyassigned to each level.The second factor was reading ability, which had two

levels: (a) low reading ability and (b) high reading ability.In the beginning of the study, we administered the TRC todetermine whether any student had a language or readingdisorder. The results were used to divide students into tworeading ability groups. Students who scored below themean were assigned to the low reading ability group andthose who scored above the mean to the high reading abil-ity group. The mean score on the TRC was 16.19 (SD D3.75).Table 1 shows the number of students with high and low

reading ability in each of the three treatment conditions.

Measures

Note-taking performance. The note-taking performancewas measured by the NTET, a task we designed. The textswere expository in nature and perused by a panel of threeexpert elementary teachers to ensure that the textual con-tent was grade-appropriate and unfamiliar to the students.An article entitled “The Cycle of the Rocks” was used inthe NTET and described three types of rocks: igneous, sedi-mentary and metamorphic. The article touched on howthese rock types were transformed over time as geological

TABLE 1. The Distribution of the Students in the ThreeGroups with Different Reading Abilities

LR HR Total

NTI (three classes) 45 45 90FNT (four classes) 62 51 113FRW (five classes) 73 73 146Total (12 classes) 180 169 349

Note. NTI D note-taking instruction group; FNT D free note tak-ing without instruction group; FRW D free-recall writing group;LRD low reading ability; HR D high reading ability.

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conditions changed. The article consisted of five para-graphs with approximately 700 Chinese characters andeach paragraph had one main concept. In this task, stu-dents were required to read the article and take notes asthey read. A concept score was assigned to identify thenumber of correct concepts observed in their notes. Foreach paragraph, 2 points were awarded if the main conceptfor that paragraph was correctly and completely expressedin the notes. One point was awarded if the correct conceptwas partially expressed in the notes. No points wereawarded if an incorrect concept was expressed in the notes.With five paragraphs, the range of the total concept scorefor each participant was between 0 and 10.

Reading comprehension. The baseline of reading compre-hension was measured by the TRC (Lin & Chi, 2002).This is a standard test with 24 multiple-choice questionsacross four texts. There are four types of questions: (a) fac-tual text knowledge questions, (b) summarizing questions,(c) analysis and comparison questions, and (d) inferencequestions. The minimum possible score is 0 and the highestpossible score is 24.

The reading comprehension was measured by the ShortComprehension Test (SCT), an experimental task wedesigned, based on the design principles of the TRC. Toexamine whether note taking facilitated the processing ofunfamiliar information, as suggested by Peper and Mayer(1986), the content of the SCT was one where the subjectwas unfamiliar for the students. The text of was expositoryin nature and we also consulted a panel of three expert ele-mentary teachers to judge the appropriateness of its con-tent. The SCT consisted of 16 multiple-choice questions.Possible total scores ranged from 0 to 16. The internal reli-ability of the SCT was .678.

The Development of Note-Taking Skills Instruction

A series of steps were adopted to develop the note-tak-ing strategy instruction for elementary school students.

First, the NTET was designed to investigate the note-taking performance of novices and experts. Previous stud-ies have indicated that comparing the note-taking behav-iors of experts and novices will show the differences innote taking performance and the level of critical thinkingduring the process of taking notes (Hidi & Klaiman, 1983).

Second, this study further analyzed and compared thenotes of the experts (five graduate students) and the novi-ces (349 elementary students) on the NTET. We used thenotes of the experts as exemplars of the strategies involvedin good note taking and the characteristics of good notes.

Finally, we developed different lessons to fit the needsand skill levels of the elementary students. In particular, aframework was designed for note-taking teaching plansand materials. The teaching plans included the strategiesand principles to be addressed as well as teaching templatesfor the lessons, so the teachers could exercise flexibility and

modify their teaching methods according to the situationin their classes.Some empirical results (e.g., Faber et al., 2000; P. L. Lee

et al., 2008) suggests that teachers can help improvestudents’ reading ability by means of developing theirteaching skills and by teaching students reading compre-hension skills. Thus, the activities of the note-takinginstruction included teacher’s explanations, demonstra-tions, and guides for student note-taking practice activi-ties. In particular, three main activities were embedded inthe note-taking instruction. First, teachers systematicallypresented learning materials and explained how to performdefinite note-taking strategies. Second, teachers demon-strated appropriate note-taking skills and provided studentswith opportunities to practice these skills. Demonstratingappropriate note-taking strategies is important becauseteachers are regarded as experts, and thus, the students willemulate their behaviors. Finally, teachers guided studentsas they revised their notes after discussion and sharingwith their classmates. Students were encouraged toimprove their notes based on peer feedbacks.The note-taking instruction was developed linearly and

the degree of difficulty increased over the five sessions.Each lesson was developed with a unique purpose andextended from what was taught in the previous lesson. Thefive lessons are summarized in Table 2.

Lesson 1: Highlighting the main idea. The main goal ofLesson 1 was to learn how to identify important informa-tion and then write it in their own words rather than copy-ing the full text. Kiewra (1987) found that the biggestproblem students faced while taking notes was that theyfailed to identify the key ideas or to highlight the mostimportant information. The finding is consistent with thepre-NTET results, where students used verbatim copyingand only took one paragraph as a note. Therefore, in thislesson, the focus was the techniques of marking key ideasand important information, and the skills of identifyingthe key ideas and important information. First, the techni-ques included underlining, keywords, symbols, and marks.The teachers should instruct students to highlight impor-tant information either by underlining or by using symbolsand to use different colors to mark different levels of ideas.Second, key ideas or important information could be iden-tified using textual cues, such as the text titles and adjunctquestions within the text (e.g., Hamaker, 1986; Kintsch,2005). It was further determined that while identifyingimportant pieces of information was a central part of thenote-taking process, understanding why a particular pieceof information is important was critical. The teacherswould demonstrate how to use the textual cues, for exam-ple, to focus on finding the concepts which are relevant tothe text topic.

Lesson 2: Reducing information in paragraphs. The maingoal of Lesson 2 was to learn how to take notes quickly. It

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is necessary to reduce the quantity of information beingrecorded; therefore, ideas must be condensed (Anderson &Hidi, 1988; Piolat et al., 2005). The lesson is also designedto reduce verbatim copying. Students need to learn todetermine what content in a passage is most important andtransform it into a concise statement without changing themeaning of the text. The focus of the learning is to selectinformation and condense it, which is similar to the pro-cess of summarizing. The concrete steps include deletingtrivia, deleting redundancies, substituting a superordinatefor a list of items and substituting a superordinate for a listof actions (Brown & Day, 1983). Accordingly, teachersshould instruct students on how to eliminate redundantinformation, for example, by skipping the example in theparagraph, or by excluding descriptive words, and on howto integrate low-level ideas to construct higher level ideas.In this way, students can begin to learn how to reduceinformation using short text segments, such that the con-densed information in the notes retains only the gist of theidea or main concept (Anderson & Hidi, 1988). However,this lesson is hard to learn, because the gist or main con-cept is often not present in the surface structure of thetext. We suggested that teachers could teach by shorteninglong sentences to reducing information in the paragraphs.

Lesson 3: Identifying keywords. The main goal of Lesson3 was to improve the quality of student note taking, byusing keywords to connect and organize the relevant ideas.The keywords emphasize certain aspects of the semanticcontent, or aspects of the structure of the content. Thislesson’s focus is to identify those keywords which revealthe rhetorical relationship between two or more ideas orpieces of information, such as comparison, causal,

description, collection and problem/solution (Cook &Mayer, 1988; Meyer, Brandt, & Bluth, 1980). Examples ofkeywords for comparative relationships include however,but, and although, while causal relationships are signaled bybecause, so, and as a result. Sequence relationships containfirst, second/next, third, and final. Once students know themeaning of these words, they can grasp the logical relation-ships among propositions better and use these keywords tobuild the connections and organize the pieces of informa-tion or propositions in the notes. The teachers should dem-onstrate identifying one logical word and using it in thenote. Then students generate could connections amongideas or propositions in the notes to enhance their compre-hension of the text. Students practiced pointing out thekeywords and the proposition relationships. We suggestthat students can combine this skill and other appropriatenote-taking skills, such as reducing paragraph informationor using visual note-taking representations.

Lesson 4: Organizing information with visualrepresentation. The main goal of Lesson 4 was to introducevarious note representations. The pre-NTET results sug-gested that the students simply took notes in the form ofwords, rather than using various note-taking representa-tions. The students may lack the experience or ability totake notes in nonverbal representations. Therefore, thislesson focuses on introducing the use of visual representa-tions and its benefits. The visual representation concretelyvisualizes textual content and can include telegraphicicons, illustrations, graphs, charts, diagrams, and so on.The benefits of visual representations include the visualiza-tion of abstract concepts, the ability to show the structureand relationships between concepts (Hannus & Hy€on€a,

TABLE 2. Description of the Five Lessons

Name of the lesson Focus of the lesson

Lesson 1 Highlighting the main idea 1. To know the techniques: underlining, keywords, symbols, andmarks

2. To identify key ideas or important information: using textual cues,such as the text title and adjunct questions

Lesson 2 Reducing information inparagraphs

1. To select information and condense it2. The method of condensing: deleting trivia or redundancies,

substituting a superordinate for a list of items or actionsLesson 3 Identifying keywords 1. To identify the keywords and their rhetorical relationships

2. The keywords and their relationships—comparative relationships:however, but, although; causal relationships: because, so, as aresult; sequence relationships: first, second/next, third, final

Lesson 4 Organizing information with visualrepresentation

1. To understand various representations and its benefits2. To use visual representation, telegraphic icons, illustrations,

graphs, charts, diagrams, etc., to organize informationLesson 5 Awareness of the text structure 1. To analyze the structure of the text

2. Three types of textual structure: main headings and subheadings,sequence, and classification

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1999; Koran & Koran, 1980; Mayer, 2002), and the abilityto present complex information (Carney & Levin, 2002;Levie & Lentz, 1982; Rummel, Levin, & Woodward,2003). This lesson allowed students to recognize theadvantages of using different representations, such asdecreasing the time required to write and reread while alsodealing with complicated information. Using visual repre-sentations to take notes permits for cross-text referencingand the reorganization of the main information (Piolatet al., 2005). Hence, students can integrate knowledgefrom previous lessons to determine the characteristic ofthe passage or the salient information of the paragraphwhile also identifying the appropriate note-taking format.For example, descriptive and comparative informationcould be shown in a table, and information about a sequen-tial relationship with a flowchart.

To further explain the process of lesson instruction, Les-son 4 is used as an example to show how the teachersexplain, demonstrate and guide students to use this note-taking skill, and then how students practice note taking. Inthe explanation activity, teachers used a paragraph thatdescribed the differences and similarities between cloudand fog. They demonstrated how to arrange and name thecolumns and rows in a table. The teachers asked studentsto think of how many columns and rows would be suffi-cient. This step compelled students to compare informa-tion and decide what content to use to fill the table. In thedemonstration and guidance activity, teachers created atable and instructed the students on how to fill in the con-tent, and merged columns when content was similar (seeFigure 1).

In the practice activity, students practiced on their ownby creating a table about the characteristics of five types offog. They had to grasp important information from the dif-ferent paragraphs, select common properties from differentpieces of information, and then decide how many columnsand rows would appear in the table. Also, students usedthe reduce paragraph information skill to record the con-tent in the table. Figure 2 provides as an example of thetype of table produced and Figure 3 shows the translatedversion. If students did not know what to put in the table,the teacher could encourage higher level students to teachothers or encourage students to discuss with groupmembers.

Lesson 5: Awareness of the text structure. The main goalof Lesson 5 was to analyze the text structure. Understand-ing the structure of the text can facilitate students’ identifi-cation of the main idea of the text, and organizing therelevant information and patterns of superordinate andsubordinate ideas. Textual structures are considered impor-tant organizational schemes underlying effective compre-hension of informational discourse, because they helpreaders to organize concepts or important ideas based onthe explicit or implied relationships communicated by thetext (Englert & Thomas, 1987; Meyer & Ray, 2011).Therefore, teaching students the structure of informationaltext improves both comprehension and recall of key textinformation, and allows them to examine how ideas in thetext are interrelated (Duke & Pearson, 2002; Meyer &Ray, 2011). In this lesson, the students are introduced tothree types of textual structure: main headings and sub-headings, sequence, and classification. Main headings andsubheadings present the hierarchy of the text and areregarded as the outline of the text. The sequence describesthe continuous and connected series of events or steps in aprocess. Classification refers to grouping or segregatingmaterials into classes or categories. When students learn

(similarities) (differences)

(Cloud) (a collection of liquid water droplets or ice crystals)

(suspended in the atmosphere above the surface)

(fog)(suspended in the air at or near the Earth's surface)

FIGURE 1. The example teachers used to explain how tocreate a table in Lesson 4.

FIGURE 2. An example of a student’s notes forLesson 4.

Process of fog formation Place of occurrenceRadiation fog

forms at night under clear skies with calm winds when heat is absorbed by the earth’s surface

in calm conditions with clear sky in winter

Advection fog

when moist air passes over a cool surface by advection (wind) and is cooled

the coastal areas from Hsin-chu to Tam-sui in Taiwan

Evaporation fog

created by cold air passing over warmer water

polar regions

Upslope fog forms when winds blow air up a slope, cooling it and causing the moisture in it to condense

Ocean, mountains and hills

Frontal fog forms as falling from relatively warm air above a frontal surface, evaporates into cooler air close to the Earth’s surface

near a front

FIGURE 3. A translated example of a student’s note inLesson 4.

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the structure, they learn how to segment the content of theparagraph and determine the salient information for theirnotes.

These five lessons of note-taking instruction are designednot only to impart note-taking skills to the students, butalso to teach them how to use them flexibly. For example,students could base on the textual structure and furtheridentify keywords and determine what type of note-takingrepresentation best fits the context of the information. Evenusing tables to take notes requires that students grasp themain concepts and appropriately condense the information.

Procedure

This study was divided into three phases: baseline, inter-vention, and evaluation phases.

In the baseline phase, to evaluate the initial reading com-prehension and note-taking performance, TRC and pre-NTET test were conducted for all three groups. Each testtook approximately 40 min to complete. In the pre-NTET,the participants were required to read an article and takenotes while reading over a 25-min period. Based on theresults of the pre-NTET, we analyzed students’ note-takingperformance and referred to the experts’ notes before design-ing a series of note-taking instructions. Three workshopswere conducted to discuss the materials and the content ofthe note-taking instructions with the NTI group teachers.

During the intervention phase, in each activity, threegroups read the same articles, but the main tasks were dif-ferent. The NTI group students received note-taking skillsinstruction from their teachers. The NTI group studentsreceived five lessons on note-taking skills and practicedtaking notes under their teachers’ guidance. The FNTgroup students read an article without note-taking instruc-tion and were invited to take notes by themselves, writingdown what they deemed to be important for supportingand facilitating their comprehension of the textual mate-rial. This was done in order to compare the effectiveness ofthe note-taking instruction. The FRW group students readan article and engaged in free-recall writing rather thannote-taking practice in order to assess the effect of note-taking practice.

In the evaluation phase, post-NTET and SCT tests wereconducted for the three groups in order to determine theeffectiveness of the instruction on students’ note-takingperformance and reading comprehension. The post-NTETwas conducted 2 weeks after the end of the instruction andthe SCT was conducted 3 weeks after.

Three Analyses of Students’ Notes in NTET

It is more important that students be able to point outimportant information, develop a coherent means of orga-nizing what is learned, and generate meaningful under-standing than copy the information from the text.Moreover, the quantity and quality of notes is related to

academic achievement, the ability to reorganize informa-tion across sections of text during reading, and the engage-ment during note-taking instructions. Hence, we analyzedand examined the three dimensions of students’ notesbetween pre- and post-NTET: verbatim copying, the repre-sentation, and the terse value.For verbatim copying, students copy text word by word.

Verbatim copying, while including more complete textualinformation, shows that the students did not grasp theimportant information and were not able to make distinc-tions about the relative importance of the concepts. Fur-thermore, previous studies (Kobayashi, 2006; Laidlawet al., 1993; Slotte & Lonka, 1999) have found that verba-tim copying is not as beneficial as reorganized note taking,and is less beneficial for comprehension. The articleincluded in the NTET contained five main concepts.When one student copied one main idea verbatim, it wascounted as one instance of verbatim copying; when onestudent copied five main concepts verbatim, it was countedas five instances.

Formula 1: the percentage of verbatim copying

D the number of instances of verbatim

copying=.five main concepts

� the number of students/

Representation in the students’ notes could reveal whetherthey reorganized the information and chose how to repre-sent it. In this study, we selected three main paragraphs(the second, third, and fourth paragraphs) from NTET asone integrated unit, which described the formation of thethree kinds of rocks and how each of them can change toanother kind of rock over time. Students could take noteson the content using different means of representation,which reflected how students build the connection amongideas. For coding note-taking representations, four codeswere used: no notes, words, graphics, and tables. No notesmeans students did not take notes from these three para-graphs. The other three codes were used according tostudents’ most-used representations in their notes.Regarding terse value, Kiewra (1987) mentioned that

effective note taking requires a sufficient elaboration of thecritical ideas. On the basis of this statement, we definedthe terse value as a measure of the terseness of the notestaken. In other words, students take notes by using essen-tial words or symbols—a symbol, icon, or illustration is cal-culated as a word—to present one concept. In particular,the terse value of students’ notes was calculated as the con-cept score divided by the number of words. The higher theterse value, the more concise the students’ notes were.

Formula 2: the terse value D the concept score=

the number of words

We and few research assistants conducted all scoring andcoding of the pre- and post-NTET. Interrater reliability for

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the analysis of all notes was established by three indepen-dent raters, with a reliability score of .93. Differences inthe coding were discussed by the raters, and interrateragreement reached 100%.

Results

A preliminary analysis of the data did not show any evi-dence of violations of statistical assumptions. Examinationof scatter plots supported the assumption of normality andrevealed linear relationships for all tests. The resultsfocused on the degree to which note-taking instructionenhanced student note-taking performance, and readingcomprehension.

Note-Taking Performance

Verbatim copying in students’ notes. Table 3 shows thatfor the NTI group, the percentage of verbatim copying ofboth high and low reading ability students decreased from18.97% to 7.76%. However, the percentage of verbatimcopying remained high for the FNT and the FRW groupstudents. In other words, the NTI group students, whoreceived the note-taking instruction, reduced verbatimcopying, and could paraphrase the content. On the otherhand, verbatim copying was not reduced in the other twogroups who did not receive the instruction.

Representation in students’ notes. Figure 4 shows the per-centages of various representations in pre- and post-NTETfrom the three groups of students. A high percentage ofrepresentations in the three groups took notes with words(NTI group: 95.56%, FNT group: 95.58%, FRW group:88.28%), which showed that they took directly from thearticle without exploring other representations. In otherwords, most students used a single means for presentingtheir notes. In contrast, the post-NTET showed that every-one took notes rather than missing important informationand approximately one fifth of the NTI group studentsused various representations, such as graphics (2.22%) ortables (18.89%). Furthermore, the percentage of studentsusing tables was higher than that using graphics. We con-sider tables to be more appropriate to classify and catego-rize the content. This means that the NTI group studentscould utilize different representations to organize relevantconcepts from the text, such as graphics or tables. How-ever, in the post-NTET, some students in the FNT andFRW groups did not take notes, the other still used words

TABLE 3. The Percentage of Verbatim Copying for theThree Groups

Group AbilityPre-NTET(Percentage)

Post-NTET(Percentage)

NTI LR 19.26 7.78HR 18.71 7.74Total 18.97 7.76

FNT LR 17.42 20.00HR 23.14 26.67Total 20.00 23.01

FRW LR 17.78 21.39HR 18.36 21.37Total 18.07 21.38

Note. NTI D note-taking instruction group; FNT D free note tak-ing without instruction group; FRW D free-recall writing group;LRD low reading ability; HRD high reading ability.

FIGURE 4. The percentages of students in the three groups using various representations in the pre- and post-NTET.

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to present the concepts. In particular, the percentage ofstudents in the two groups using words was still high,92.92% and 93.79%. There was no difference in usingrepresentation between the pre- and post-NTET. In sum-mary, the NTI group students not only knew the differentrepresentations of note taking, but could also utilize appro-priate representations to reveal the specific concepts intheir notes.

The terse value in students’ notes. From Table 4, it is clearthat in the pre-NTET, the NTI group wrote more concepts(4.111 > 3.438, 3.531) and more words (74.544 > 62.911,65.416) than the other two groups. In contrast, the NTIgroup did not have a higher score than the other twogroups in terms of concept score, or the number of wordsin the post-NTET. The terse value was determined bydividing the concept score by the number of words, andwas used to verify whether students grasped the main con-cepts of the article, whether they omitted redundant words,and whether they included key points in their notes. Ahigher terse value means that the student used fewer wordsto cover more concepts. Table 4 also shows the terse valueof three groups, both pre- and post-NTET.

As the correlation between the pre-NTET (covariate)and post-NTET of the terse value was strong and signifi-cant (r D .772), a two8-way 3 Treatment Group £ 2 Read-ing Ability analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) wasconducted on the post-NTET. As expected, there was asignificant main effect for the NTI group, F(2, 342) D11.19, p< .05, partial h2 D .052. The LSD comparison pro-cedures revealed that students in the NTI group (M D0.075, SD D 0.075) scored higher than those in the FNTgroup (M D 0.051, SD D 0.023) and the FRW group (M D0.054, SD D 0.023). The data indicated that the NTIgroup students wrote more concepts with fewer words inthe post-NTET than either of the other groups but thatthere was no significant treatment £ reading ability inter-action, F(2, 342) D 0.098, p > .05, and no significant main

effect on reading ability, F(2, 342) D 0.00, p > .05. Fur-thermore, as can be seen in Table 4, in the NTI group,there was no significant difference between low and highability students, F(2, 87) D 0.239, p > .05. Surprisingly,the terse value of the low reading ability students in theNTI group was significantly better than that of high read-ing ability students in the other groups, F(2, 165) D 5.07,p< .05. According to the raw score, the low reading abilitystudents in the NTI group made few gains on the conceptscore, but they also wrote fewer words, suggesting that theNTI group grasped the essentials of taking concise notes.Hence, the note-taking instruction clearly enhanced theNTI group students’ note-taking performance.

Reading Comprehension

The effect of note-taking instruction on reading (i.e.,whether note-taking practice enhanced the students’ read-ing comprehension skills, was examined through SCT.Table 5 presents the mean scores on the SCT for the threegroups in terms of reading ability.As there was a strong significant correlation between the

TRC score (covariate) and the SCT score (r D .652), a

TABLE 4. Terse Value of the Three Groups in the Pre- and Post-NTET

Pre-NTET Post-NTET

Group Ability # Concepts # Words Terse value # Concepts # Words Terse value

NTI LR 3.444 65.978 0.058 3.556 57.356 0.079HR 4.778 83.111 0.063 4.667 75.889 0.071Total 4.111 74.544 0.060 4.111 66.620 0.075

FNT LR 3.161 60.581 0.051 3.081 66.516 0.047HR 3.980 71.294 0.056 3.961 75.078 0.055Total 3.531 65.416 0.053 3.478 70.381 0.051

FRW LR 3.219 57.822 0.053 3.822 70.274 0.053HR 3.658 68.000 0.052 4.781 92.014 0.054Total 3.438 62.911 0.052 4.301 81.144 0.054

Note. NTI D note-taking instruction group; FNT D free note taking without instruction group; FRW D free-recall writing group; LR D low readingability; HR D high reading ability; # ConceptsD concepts score; # Words D the number of words.

TABLE 5. Mean Scores on the SCT for the ThreeGroups

LR HR Total

M SD M SD M SD

NTI 11.05 2.65 13.57 1.80 12.31 2.59FNT 9.69 2.23 12.18 2.55 10.81 2.67FRW 10.01 2.63 12.52 2.28 11.29 2.76

Note. NTI D note-taking instruction group; FNT D free note tak-ing without instruction group; FRW D free-recall writing group;LRD low reading ability; HR D high reading ability.

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two-way 3 Treatment Group £ 2 Reading AbilityANCOVA was conducted on the SCT. The analysisrevealed significant main effects for treatment, F(2, 333)D 9.23, p < .05, partial h2 D .053. The LSD comparisonprocedures for the SCT revealed that students in the NTIgroup (M D 12.31, SD D 2.59) scored higher than those inthe FRW group (M D 11.29, SD D 2.77) and in the FNTgroup (M D 10.81, SD D 2.67); there was no significantdifference between the other two groups. Conducting asimple main effect of the treatment factor, under both highand low reading ability conditions, the NTI group scoredhigher than either the FRW group or the FNT group. How-ever, with respect to the SCT, there were no interactioneffects for intervention on reading ability or for the maineffect on reading ability. The results showed that comparedto both the high and the low reading ability students, theNTI group performed better than the FNT group and theFRW group on the textual comprehension test.

Thus, these results suggest that note-taking instructionnot only improved the note-taking performance of theNTI group students, but also had a positive impact on theirreading comprehension. In other words, when studentslearn how to incorporate note-taking skills and write downimportant ideas, they also improve their understanding ofwhat they have read.

Discussion

Improving Students’ Note-Taking Performance from VerbatimCopying to Terse Note Taking and from Using Single toMultiple Representations

The results showed that with instruction, the note-tak-ing skills of the NTI group improved. Compared to thepre-NTET results, the NTI group students’ note-takingperformance in the post-NTET showed not only more con-cise notes than the other groups, but also showed variousnote-taking representations, including the use of words,tables and graphics. Concise notes mean less verbatimcopying and higher terse value. It should be noted that thelow reading ability students in the NTI group performedbetter than the high reading ability students in the othertwo groups. This suggests that low reading ability studentsbenefitted most from the note-taking instruction (e.g.,Boyle, 2010; Boyle & Weishaar, 2001; Faber et al., 2000;Peper & Mayer, 1978). We speculate that the explanationsfor the results could be that fourth-grade students may gen-erally lack skills of how to take efficacious notes and theNTI group students were given more opportunities to prac-tice note taking. Shrager and Mayer (1989) also suggestedthat instructional methods are more effective for less-skilled learners than they are for more highly skilled learn-ers, especially when such instruction encourages studentsto use strategies which make them actively participate inthe learning process. The first assumption was also exam-ined by the results of this pre-NTET, which indicated that

most students were in the lower level with respect to note-taking skills, a finding that is consistent with other rele-vant studies (Kiewra, 1987; Piolat et al., 2005). Hence, thedesign of note-taking instruction in this study is intendedto complement deficiencies in students’ note-taking skillsby considering the participants’ initial note-taking skilllevel to maximize the benefits derived from instruction.Instruction can assist students to learn and practice effec-tive note-taking skills. In the intervention phase, the NTIgroup students received the teachers’ demonstration andgenerated their own notes so they gained more experienceand more familiarity with note taking than the two othergroups.The conciseness and use of more visual representations

in their notes reflected efficacious note taking, close to theexperts’ notes. These results are similar to those obtainedby Laidlaw et al. (1993) and P. L. Lee et al. (2008). Thepercentage of verbatim copying diminished and the tersevalue improved which implies that the NTI group studentslearned to incorporate note-taking skills, such as to capturethe majority of the critical ideas in the reading text and toshorten and organize essential information by their wordselection. Students knew how to use different note-takingrepresentations to organize information, and understoodthat note taking facilitates the processes of combininginformation from different parts of the text with the read-ers’ prior knowledge. In sum, combining both characteris-tics of terse notes and multiple representations, the notetaking could be viewed as effective.

Supporting Generative Learning and Enhancing ReadingComprehension Through Effective Note-Taking Instruction

Comparisons between the FNT and NTI groups in post-NTET performance revealed that students in the FNTgroup did not produce notes as effective as those in theNTI group. In contrast to the students in the NTI group,there was a higher percentage of verbatim copying amongstudents from the FNT group. Terse values for this groupwere also lower and the students were still using words totake notes. Recall that the students in this group were notgiven instruction in note taking but had the opportunity topractice note-taking skills. The findings pointed the impor-tance of structured instruction in helping students generateeffective notes.Results of the SCT showed that students in the NTI

group who produced more effective notes had higher read-ing comprehension scores as compared to students in theFNT group who produced more superficial notes. This sug-gests that it is not note taking that enhances reading com-prehension. Rather, it is the effectiveness of note takingthat has a positive effect on reading comprehension. Wethink that effective note-taking skills enhance readingcomprehension as generative learning occurs in the note-taking process. According to the perspective held by theWittrock model of generative learning (Linden &

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Wittrock, 1981), reading comprehension occurs whenreaders actively generate two types of relations: (a)between the textual information and the reader’s priorknowledge and experience and (b) among the differentparts of the text. The generation of these two types of rela-tions is referred to as generative learning. In generativelearning, students are active participants in the learningprocess rather than passive recipients of information, andgenerate knowledge by forming mental connectionsbetween concepts (Wittrock, 1989). Further, H. W. Leeet al. (2007) asserted that knowledge can be generatedmeaningfully only through learners’ self-generation of rela-tionships and understanding. Effective note taking empha-sizes generative learning. Students in our instruction groupare required to actively select information across differentsections of the text and organize relevant ideas coherently.These skills in turn facilitate their efforts to process theirnotes and use them in emergent tasks that require deeperunderstanding, comparison and evaluation of the contentof the texts (Slotte & Lonka, 1999). Comprehension isenhanced as a result of generative learning. Findings fromthis study support the proposition that generative learningmediates the relationship between note taking and readingcomprehension. Analyses of the three note-taking dimen-sions showed that students in the NTI group who producedeffective notes engaged in reorganization of the text andperformed better in reading comprehension tests afternote-taking instruction.

In sum, structured note-taking instruction is vital tohelp students learn effective note-taking skills. These skillsevoke generative learning that enhances readingcomprehension.

Adjusting the Components of Note-Taking Instruction and theCriterion for Note-Taking Performance Evaluation

The present study is an extension of past studies in thatwe considered the students’ initial note-taking perfor-mance. Note-taking skills are divided into five lessons thatguide students in learning step by step. This design is dis-tinguished from previous studies (e.g., Laidlaw et al., 1993;P. L. Lee et al., 2008), which have regarded note taking asa single holistic strategy and provided several courses tofamiliarize students with note taking. However, the stu-dents in the present study were much younger and had lesslearning experience, and therefore note taking needed tobe broken down into several skills to make it easier forthem to learn.

In addition, there are two main considerations that dis-tinguish this study from previous note-taking instructionstudies. First, this study emphasizes the importance of theinternal, rather than the external, factors associated withacquiring note-taking strategies. The internal factors speakto improving the skills of note taking, whereas externalfactors speak to guide notes or organizational lecture cueswhich can be used to facilitate student lecture note taking

(Konrad et al., 2009; P. L. Lee et al., 2008; Titsworth &Kiewra, 2004). Past studies found that students who useexternal cues could improve their note-taking perfor-mance, but whether the facilitative effects of the externalcues would be obtained even when the cues are removedremains unknown. To address this issue, we developednote-taking instructions to help students learn internalnote-taking skills rather than relying on the assistance ofexternal cues.Second, the note-taking analysis approach is revised.

Terse note taking, rather than the number of words or ideaunits, is the criterion used to evaluate note-taking perfor-mance, deemed characteristics of good note taking (e.g.,Boyle, 2010; Rahmani & Sadeghi, 2011; Slotte & Lonka,1999). The difference between the two perspectives isbased on the fact that the past studies have focused onnote taking during lectures, and accordingly, they consid-ered the cognitive limitations of the note takers, such ascomprehension ability, working memory span, writingspeed, and so on. We agree with the view that “the qualityand quantity of notes may vary greatly from person to per-son ranging from exhaustive outlines to a random list offacts” (Cook & Mayer, 1983, p. 104). In this study, theinformation presented for the note takers is a text ratherthan a lecture. Hence, this study applies the terse value,which focuses on the sufficient elaboration of critical ideasand takes simplification as a criterion of note-takingperformance.

Conclusion

In this study, we developed and conducted five note-tak-ing lessons that allowed students to engage effectively instep-by-step learning of note-taking skills. The step-by-step approach reduced the learning load and allowed stu-dents to master note-taking subskills. The results indicatethat note taking is an effective strategy for elementary stu-dents in the reading context, and prove that students canbe taught and internalize note-taking skills. As studentsbecome more familiar with the skills, their performancerevealed a reduction in verbatim notes, an increase in vari-ous note-taking representations and improvement in thenote-taking performance. Moreover, the terse value of thenotes showed that students organized the information fromthe text and the terse note-taking produces generativelearning and thereby improves students’ readingcomprehension.Based on the results of this study, there are several sug-

gestions for future research and teachers. First, the criterionfor evaluating note-taking performance, the terse value, isuseful in the reading context but future studies shouldexamine its effectiveness and availability in the lecturecontext. Second, when teachers teach reading strategyinstruction such as note taking, they should consider theirstudents’ level of learning and integrate appropriate scaf-folding to help students systematically learn and develop

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successful reading strategies. Third, teachers should model,both verbally and visually, the various note-taking skills,explaining when and why they are incorporating differentstrategies. After mastering the subskills of note taking,teachers should provide more opportunities for students topractice their note-taking skills in learning contexts sothat note taking emerges as a spontaneous strategy.

FUNDING

The authors would like to thank Ministry of Education,Taiwan, for financially supporting this research under Con-tract No. 988106.

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AUTHORS NOTE

Wan-Chen Chang is a postdoctoral researcher atResearch Center for Science and Technology for Learning,National Central University in Taiwan. Her currentresearch focuses on early writing and using technology toenhance writing.Yu-Min Ku is an Associate Professor in the Graduate

Institute of Learning and Instruction and the Center forTeacher Education at National Central University, Tai-wan. Her current research focuses on understanding child-ren’s vocabulary acquisition and literacy development andimproving elementary reading instruction.

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