We did Contemporary Topics as an
assignment this summer vacation. It was the textbook that we listened to the
academic lectures, answered questions and learned key points and how to listen
them carefully. It was difficult for me to listen to the lecture and understand
what the speaker said. I think the reason why I could do well is not being able
to take notes. I noticed that taking notes is important to catch what the
lecture means. Recently, I started to practice taking notes during the lectures.
I always tried
to grasp the meaning of lecture without taking notes, but almost all lectures were
hard to remember. I could not answer the questions and I took a very long time
to do all steps of each lecture in Contemporary Topics. One day, when I did the
homework of TOEFL class, I listened to the example of conversation from
textbook while I was trying to take notes. Even if they spoke very fast, I
wrote some words that I heard. Just then, I could understand what they discussed
and answer the questions. I found to take notes made me concentrate on
listening. So, I noticed the importance of taking notes.
In the
University Prep. class, we are going to take a class at SFCC. We study
important terms and how to listen and take notes in this class to follow the
academic lecture. For example, a teacher uses sequence markers to order the
topics, repeats some words and terms and talks slowly to tell us about main
ideas or key words in the lecture. We should care about teacher’s explanations
and get the key points. We tried to listen to an example of lecture in
Contemporary Topics paying attention to the above things in this class. Of
course, I was taking notes. Thanks to them, it became easier to catch main
points in the lecture than before. I want to make full use of knowledge which I
learned in the real lecture in college. I am looking forward to taking the
class.
In my opinion, I
want TOEIC to change the system of listening. In the listening section, we
cannot take any notes during the test. I can understand short sentences or
conversations, but it is difficult to understand long conversations or
speeches. If I can take notes while I listen, I will be able to increase the
number of correct answers.
I want to keep taking notes in not
only lectures in college but also other classes. It is important to concentrate.
I think this ability may be useful in the future.