Listening Skills: Note-taking: using numbers, symbols and abbreviations

Taking notes is one of the important listening skills. It helps you concentrate and makes you an active listener. The notes you take remind you of what you have heard and make it easier for you to follow the speaker. Besides, by taking notes, you can organize the ideas you are learning about in a clear and well-referenced way. You can easily refer to the notes when needed. But how to take notes?

In order to save time and energy when you take notes, learn to use numbers, symbols and abbreviations in note-taking. There are some ways to do it:

1) use the actual numbers “1”, “2”, “3”, etc. instead of the words spelled out.

2) use symbols such as “<¬¬” for “smaller / less than”, and “>” for “bigger / more than”. More symbols that are commonly used are as follows:

3) use abbreviations or shortened forms of words / phrases.

Beside these common symbols and abbreviations listed above, it may also be helpful to make up your own ones. In the following, you are going to listen to a program about the world’s environmental problems. When you take notes, use the numbers, symbols and abbreviations we learned above. You can come up with your own abbreviations, but ensure they make sense to you so that you can understand what they mean when reviewing the notes later.