TOEFL Listening lectures. How to take notes. So, let me start by answering your first question right away. Do I have to take notes? I'm sure I'll see in the comments somewhere, "I took the test, I didn't take notes, I got a perfect score, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about." I've heard this a lot actually in my last videos about this topic. So, let me start by showing you an example. Here is a question on the left, and here are my notes on the right. It's a lot of notes, I typed them out, I'm going to explain this in a minute, and here is me answering the question with zero notes. Notes, zero notes. Okay. Do you have to take notes? No, you can get a good score without taking notes, totally fine, but it's advised, so you should try to take notes. Now, your next question might be, "Wait, but what if I can't take notes and listen at the same time? You have so many notes, I can't take notes like that." All right, what we're going to do is we're going to start small. When you are practicing at home, write down just five words when you're listening to a lecture, just five words, that's it. Next time try to write down seven words. Set small goals that grow over time. Eventually, you'll find a note-taking approach that helps you listen and take notes at the same time. So, while you're listening to me talk, I want you to think of how you can balance what I am saying with how you can listen because in the TOEFL Listening, you listen to a passage and it goes away, doesn't come back, and you have to answer the questions based on two things, your memory and your notes. All right, so you could just rely on your memory or you could have your memory and your notes. So, you want you want your notes to help your memory. If you're trying to write down everything and you're not listening, then your notes are not helpful. So, start small. I hope I answered those two questions, got that out of the way. Hope I don't see all these comments about oh, I don't take notes and I do great. I hear it constantly, tired of it. You don't have to take notes, but they are helpful, and that's why we're here right now. So, this is what you're going to learn by the end of this lecture. You will know how guiding questions will help you become an active listener, you're going to know how to understand the lecture structure which is going to help you take better notes, and you're going to learn what you could, should, and must write down in your notes. I'm going to explain all this in a lot more detail, and you can follow along tstprep.com. We have a free and complete test, you can download it, we'll put a link in the description below, it has an answer key, these listening passages, all that good stuff. All right, so let's get into it right now. Oh, and before that let me introduce myself. My name is Josh MacPherson, I'm the head instructor of TST Prep, an online TOEFL school where our mission is simple, to help you get the TOEFL score you need as quickly and easily as possible. Let's do that right now, talk about TOEFL Listening, taking notes. So, why is note-taking important? Keep in mind that the TOEFL listening questions show up after the passage. You have to rely on your notes and your memory to answer the questions like I said before. So, what you want to do is you want to become an active listener. What's the difference between a passive and an active listener? Well, a passive listener tries to understand everything they hear and they don't think about why they're listening. Active listeners have goals in mind beforehand and they know why they are listening. So, you want to know why you're listening. Now, probably you say, " Because I want to get a good TOEFL score." Of course, yeah, but also you want to have some goals in mind when you're listening. So, that's one of the first strategies I teach is to try to help students set kind of mini-goals to help them focus better and take good notes. So, right now you might be thinking that "I'm listening to this because I have to listen to the TOEFL Listening because I need a good score on the test and because I have to understand everything." Those are not great goals. Instead, you
want your goals to be something like this. You want to find an important detail in the first minute. How do you know if something's an important detail? Well, you don't really. You're just trying to find an important detail in the first minute. You're trying to be active, you have a goal, that's it. Is it important? Is it not? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but you just want to have that as your goal, you're becoming active. So, since you're active, you are listening a little bit more closely. Another goal you could have is that you want to identify two ways the teacher explains the topic and you want to understand what the teacher wants the students to know. So that's the big thing here, what is the teacher teaching? What does the teacher want you to know by the end of the lecture that you're listening to? All right, so keep that in mind. You can also have some guiding questions to help you. These are very similar. What is the lecture mainly about, how does the professor elaborate on the topic, that means how does the professor talk about the topic in more detail, and what does the professor want the students to know by the end. So, same type of question. What is the teacher teaching? What's the most important thing the teacher, he or she, wants the students to know? Now, you might be thinking, "How do I know that? You know, how do I know what's important, what's not important, what the teacher wants the students to know?" Well, you should get a sense of it as you're listening, what's most important, and what the teacher is explaining over a longer period of time. All right, so we're going to look at some examples so you can have a better idea of this. This is what the test will look like. This is from ETS's official site. So, in the TOEFL lectures any difficult word will be put up there, on the little digital board, in this case it's echolocation, and then there'll be a bar that shows how much time is left in the passage itself. What we're going to do is that, I think one of the best ways to learn is to see a real example, so what we're going to do is that we're going to listen to a passage and you're going to watch me take notes at the same time. Alright, so let me stop talking, let's do it right now. Now, listen to part of a talk in an astronomy class. So, I would like to continue our discussion about the Moon, more particularly about the origins of the Moon and how it was actually created. We talked about three possible solutions, more like theories, about how the Moon was created. Can anyone tell me the name of one of these theories? Sarah? Well, I do remember the capture theory, which proposes that the Moon was located somewhere else in the galaxy, until eventually it was kind of like captured by the Earth's gravitational pull. Yes, and I'm glad you started with the capture theory because it's the easiest one to reject. Its primary drawback is that no one knows of any way that Earth could have captured such a large Moon from elsewhere. One body approaching another cannot go into orbit around it without a serious loss of energy. Furthermore, if such a capture did take place, the captured object would go into a very strange orbit rather than the nearly circular orbit our Moon goes through today. Finally, there are too many similarities in composition between Earth and the Moon. it's much more likely that the Earth and the Moon were somehow connected at one point in the past. What was another theory discussed, James? The fission theory. Like you said, the Moon was once a part of the Earth, but somehow separated from it early in their history. But I remember you mentioned some problems with this theory too. Yes, the fission theory suggests that the Moon separated from the Earth, but modern calculations have shown that this type of splitting is nearly impossible. Furthermore, it is difficult to understand how a Moon made out of materials from the Earth could have developed so many chemical differences from our own. And the third? James again. Yeah, the last one is the sister theory. It claims that the Moon formed together with the Earth but also remained independent from it. This is why many astronomers once believed of other moons in the solar system too. Yes, the sister theory was the dominant idea accepted by most astronomers in the past, but like the capture and fission theory, it had some problems, particularly when trying to explain how it could have such a lower density when compared to the Earth. Now, in an effort to resolve these apparent contradictions, scientists developed a fourth hypothesis for the origin of the Moon, one that involves a giant impact early in Earth's history. This idea, known as the giant impact hypothesis, proposes that Earth was struck by an object approximately one-tenth Earth's mass, which is about the size of Mars. This is very nearly the largest impact Earth could experience without being shattered. Now, such an impact would disrupt much of Earth and eject a vast amount of material into space, releasing almost enough energy to break the planet apart. Computer simulations indicate that material totaling several percent of Earth's mass could be ejected in such an impact. Most of this material would be from the stony mantles of Earth and the impacting body, not from their metal cores. This ejected rock would then cool and form a ring of material orbiting Earth. It was this ring that ultimately came together and formed the Moon. While we do not have any current way of showing that the giant impact hypothesis is the correct model of the Moon's origin, it does offer potential solutions to most of the major problems raised by the chemistry of the moon. Most importantly, since the Moon's raw material is from the deep rocks of Earth and the asteroid that hit it, the composition and chemistry of the Moon is better understood and explained. Now, answer the question one. What
is the professor mainly discussing? All right, so a lot of notes. Again, don't worry if your notes are not like mine or if you can't listen and take notes at the same time. Start small and you'll get better over time, so just keep that in mind. Now, I wanted to explain these notes in a little bit more detail. I wanted to make perfect notes, quote-unquote, so you get an idea of how you can organize your notes. I'm going to read the green boxes to the right here. My notes are blank, you know, some teachers put like main idea, but I actually don't recommend putting main idea, because you don't really know what the main idea is until the end. Usually, the teacher does not say, "Okay, class today we're going to talk about..." It's usually not like that. Sometimes it is, but usually not. My notes are messy, but I can understand them, that's most important. Don't worry if your notes are messy. You're the only one that needs to understand them. I don't worry about spelling too much, I just write down what I think I hear, for example, fission theory. I don't know how to spell that, I just write down the abbreviation pretty much and I use arrows and indent to organize my notes here. All right, and you'll notice on the in the red boxes on the left-hand side, I write down the class type, the main idea seems to be stated at the beginning, about the origins of the Moon. I wrote down some things that seem like subtopics, that the teacher is elaborating on talking about a little bit. Then the professor introduces another sub-topic or elaboration, I write down as many details as possible about it, and I guess what the main idea could be at the end. What should I write down in my notes? So, I just gave you a general idea here. Focus on information that is explained over a few sentences. They will not ask you about random little details, so don't worry about random little details. And this is not just me speaking, this is ETS. "You should take notes during the lectures and conversations. The questions are not meant to test your memory, but rather your understanding of the conversation or lecture." That's what they're testing there. So, the lecture has a structure that it
follows. So, if you know the structure, it'll help you take better notes. So, the first thing will be the directions, and the teacher will announce the class type, and then there'll be an introduction with some background information. The professor will make the information more specific and get closer to the main idea. And then the professor will provide details,
examples, and illustrations to explain. So, here, this is a different lecture, but the yellow part is the is the introduction, some background information. I'm going to read a little bit of this. I'm going to read the yellow part. Geology is the study of Earth's crust and the processes that have shaped its surface throughout history. Heat escaping from the interior provides energy for the formation of our planet's mountains, valleys, volcanoes, and even the continents and oceans themselves. So, very general, talking about biology, on geology, and about the processes in the Earth. Let's look at the reddish, pinkish color there. Plate tectonics is a theory that explains how slow motions within the Earth's interior move large pieces of land. So, now we're getting more specific. So, at first, was background information, geology, and about what goes on inside the Earth, it got more specific, plate tectonics, which helps explain this, and then in the blue part, let me read the final blue part here. I'm going to start reading where it says, you know when studying maps of Earth, many students noticed that the coast of North and South America could fit pretty well against the coast of Europe and Africa and blah blah blah blah blah. And then they start talking about a guy named Alfred Wagner, and then it's a story about him and how he discovered plate tectonics. And that's, that's the structure. Very similar, different lectures
will have a very similar structure. So, this leads me to what you could,
should, and must write down in your notes. So, what you must write down in your notes for lectures? An important detail in the first minute and sub-topics the professor uses to elaborate on the topic. Now, what you should write down? This is not something you must, but you should, which is what you think the main idea might be. So, like I said before, you really don't know what the main idea is until the end usually. So, after it finishes, one of the first questions is a main idea question, called a gist-content question. You don't have to worry about that right now, but basically, you want to write the main idea in your own words to help you be more active, to help you find the answer easier. So, for example, here in this example of my notes, I wrote down at the end theories of Moon origin, question mark, that's what I think the main idea is. And that's going to be actually the first question. The main idea of the lecture is not usually directly stated. After the lecture finishes, ask yourself, "What does the professor want me to know? What did the professor want me to know about this?" And I would write down what you think is what was the main idea. And here's a couple other things that you could write down. The type of class being taught, I almost always write that down, the speaker's moods or feelings at certain points. Sometimes they ask you about moods and the information that comes after a rhetorical question. So, there's no examples here, but if a teacher asks, "Why do you think everyone believed in capture theory? Well, so... " and then the teacher talks about it. So, that's a rhetorical question. It's a question where the teacher doesn't want an answer. People use rhetorical questions to get the audience's attention. If I want to get your attention, that means that the information is important. So, information that comes after a rhetorical question is usually pretty important, just something to keep in mind. That's it for the most part. Pro Tip here. The TOEFL test is designed to measure your English fluency, it is not intended to judge whether or not you can memorize details. So, don't worry about getting down all of these little details. I write down a lot of notes here, I just want you to see a kind of a "perfect" quote-unquote example of note-taking. I don't expect your notes to look like this, I don't expect you to listen the way that I listen, I expect your notes to help you understand what you're listening to, that's your goal. And usually, they don't ask you about little tiny details, they ask you about information that's elaborated on, that's talked about for a while. Alright, so we have one more example. I want you to bring everything together. Could, should, and must write down. You know about the lesson structure, going from background information to more specific and details. Also, you know that you should have some goals, some mini- goals, and I want you to bring all of this together to take notes about this last lecture. It's about sleep. Let's listen. "Now, listen to part of a talk in a psychology class. All right, let's settle down and start talking about everyone's favorite subject, sleep. And we're going to start with your circadian rhythm. So, a circadian rhythm is a biological rhythm that takes place over a period of about 24 hours. It's basically how we biologically experience each day. Our sleep-wake cycle, which is linked to our environment's natural light-dark cycle, is perhaps the most obvious example of a circadian rhythm, but we also have daily fluctuations. Now, does anyone remember a few other examples? Janet? Yes, I think that your glucose level changes based on the last time you ate. Yes, that's right. Anyone else? I think they also mentioned heart rate and body temperature, but I forget the specific examples. Don't worry about that George, we will discuss these other circadian rhythms in much more detail later in the course, but for now the most important thing to keep in mind about circadian cycles is that they are usually aligned with the outside world. For example, most people sleep during the night and are awake during the day. Now, one important regulator of sleep-wake cycles is the hormone melatonin. Melatonin release is stimulated by darkness and inhibited by light. When
people have difficulty getting sleep due to their work or demands of day-to-day life, they accumulate a sleep debt. A person with a sleep debt does not get sufficient sleep on a chronic basis, and the consequences of sleep debt include decreased levels of alertness and mental efficiency. Interestingly, since the advent of the electric light the amount of sleep that people get has actually declined. While we certainly welcome the convenience of having the darkness lit up, we also suffer the consequences of reduced amounts of sleep because we're more active during the nighttime hours than our ancestors were. As a result, many of us sleep less than seven to eight hours a night and accumulate a sleep debt. While there is tremendous variation in any given individual sleep needs, the national sleep foundation cites research to estimate that newborns require the most sleep between 12 and 18 hours a night, and that this amount declines to just seven to nine hours by the time we are adults. If you lie down to take a nap and fall asleep very easily, chances are you may have a sleep debt given that college students are famous for suffering from significant sleep debt. Chances are you and your classmates deal with these issues on a regular basis. Sleep debt and sleep deprivation have significant negative psychological and physiological consequences. Now, as mentioned earlier, lack of sleep can result in decreased mental alertness and cognitive function. In addition, sleep deprivation often results in depression-like symptoms. These effects can occur as a function of accumulated sleep debt or in response to more acute periods of sleep deprivation. Now, it may surprise you to know that sleep deprivation is associated with obesity, increased blood pressure, increased levels of stress, and reduced immune functioning. A sleep-deprived individual generally will fall asleep more quickly than if they were not sleep-deprived. Some sleep-deprived individuals have difficulty staying awake when they stop moving, for example, sitting and watching television or driving a car. That is why individuals suffering from sleep deprivation can also put themselves and others at risk when they go behind the wheel of a car or work with dangerous machinery. Some research suggests that sleep deprivation affects cognitive and motor function as much if not more than alcohol intoxication. And the amount of sleep that we get varies across our lives. When we're very young, we spend up to 16 hours a day sleeping. As we grow older, we sleep less. In fact, recent research indicates that by the time we are 65 years old, we average fewer than seven hours of sleep per day. As the amount of time we sleep varies over our lifespan, presumably, the sleep debt would adjust accordingly." So, hopefully by now your notes are starting to look like mine, maybe. Of course, it'll take a while to practice, don't worry. If it's, if you know, your progress is slow, totally natural, okay, everybody's at a different level. My could, should, and must, as always, I'm writing down the subtopics the professor uses to elaborate on the topic. I had quite a few notes here actually, not too many words per line, if you notice, just less than five words per line. I wrote down the class type, I wrote down details, that seemed to be connected to the main idea, sleep, that sounded like an important topic, so I wrote that down. And I wrote down details about sleep debt. And I noted down some negative consequences of sleep debt. And then at the end, I guess the main idea maybe this is about the effects of sleep debt. So, hopefully by now you see that as an example we're not going to look at the questions in this lecture because this is focused mostly just on note-taking, just on taking good notes to help you answer the questions, but I hope by now you feel like you know how to go from a passive to an active listener, have mini-goals, have these little things that you want to accomplish by the end. You want to find an important detail in the minute, in the first minute, you want to identify two ways the teacher explains the topic, you want to understand what the teacher wants the students to know by the end. Maybe, you can add some goals for yourself, totally up to you everybody is different. And also don't forget visit the website tstprep.com, we have something for every TOEFL student. In my experience, there are four different types of TOEFL students. Ones who have less than a month, or more than a month, or you need to improve your TOEFL skills, or your TOEFL skills and English fluency. And no matter what category you're in, we have something for you. So, if you have less than a month and just need TOEFL, Emergency Course is perfect, the basic the orange part. If you have more than a month, number two, and you just need TOEFL skills, then you should do the Emergency Course Premium. There's more practice for you to do, for you to do, more sample tests. If you have less than a month and you need TOEFL skills, and you need to improve your English fluency, then pray. We don't do anything about that. Fluency takes time to build. And this next course that we have, the TOEFL Score Builder Program, it improves your TOEFL skills and your English fluency. I'm really excited about this. It has daily practice designed to build the skills that you need for the TOEFL. And of course, visit TST Prep, we have classes, teachers, evaluations, all that good stuff. So, I hope you feel like you've achieved your objectives. You've learned about guiding questions, mini-goals, lesson structure, could, should, and must. Thank you guys for sticking around. If at the end you think, "I don't need notes, I'm going to make a comment anyway," totally fine, but let me say this guys. Thank you for staying to the end because this was a very long lecture. You should be proud of yourself. There are so many other things you could be doing besides studying for the TOEFL, but you're motivated to get your score, you want to learn. Thank you for sharing your time, it's precious and that's it. I'll see you guys in the next video.
