The relationship of notetaking to listening comprehension in the English Placement Test

Abstract

<p>The thesis is a validation study of the English Placement Test at Iowa State University, which explores the relationship of note taking to test performance. The researcher adopts both qualitative and quantitative approaches to analyzing the quality of lecture notes in relation to second language academic listening comprehension. Subjects are forty international college students who took the English Placement Test in January 2002 and their notes from the English Placement Test are assessed on three aspects that include structure, information units and note taking strategies. Correlation analysis and item analysis are conducted to investigate the relationship of the quality of lecture notes to test performance. The study shows that good quality notes are well-structured, containing more test information represented by encoding more main ideas, supporting ideas of the lecture in the notes. Among the measures of the quality of notes, main ideas, supporting ideas and structure are significantly associated with test performance. Although note taking strategies as a whole don't contribute significantly to test scores, the use of symbols is highly correlated to the arrangement of discourse structure, and encoding of major information units in the notes. The researcher argues that there is a positive relationship between good quality of notes and test performance.</p>