Note-taking competence in the learning process

Abstract

The article reports on a pilot study designed to support a longitudinal study of the development of note-taking competence among second year master’s degree students in an interpreting training programme. The research reported in this article analysed note-taking units, while semi-structured interviews were also conducted with six interpreting students in order to determine the language and frequency of the different types of note-taking units they used. The results show that the students used a mixture of the source and target languages in their notes, they have predominantly used full words and that they were aware that there was still room for development in their note-taking techniques. The pilot study produced results that will be used to optimize further research: it was established that all participants should interpret the same text, that the experiment should be conducted outside of classroom interpreting sessions, that no feedback should be given to the students prior to the interviews, that the students’ interpretation should be audio-recorded, and that the category “full words” should be split into further subcategories.

Keywords

• consecutive interpreting
• note-taking
• teaching note-taking
• semi-structured interview
• note-taking competence