WEEK 2: NOTE-TAKING (Cont.
USING ABBREVIATIONS
Adapted from Writing Centre of Learning Guide – University of Adelaide
When taking notes, you can reduce the amount of language by shortening words
and sentences. Some ways of abbreviating are:
- leaving out most articles and conjunctions (the, a, and, but)
- shorten words by leaving out vowels or other letters (also known as “word
truncation")
- using abbreviations and symbols for commonly used words and phrases
It is important to remember that you will need to know what the abbreviations
and symbols stand for when you review your notes later. Here are some
strategies for making this more likely:
Use only abbreviations and symbols that fit your needs and that you will remember
easily. Too many can make your notes difficult to understand.
Be consistent, so that the same symbol or abbreviation always means the same thing.
Otherwise your notes may become ambiguous.
Keep a separate list of your abbreviations and their meanings so that you can refer to
them if you need to in the future. If you start using a new abbreviation, add it to the
list.
Some other helpful hints for note-taking are:
Use special symbols or coloring to mark structure. For example, you may use blue for
the title of a section and green for examples.
Use special symbols for when you were not able to write down important information,
so that you can fill in the details later. For example, putting a long dash ----- to
indicate missing information.
Develop new symbols specific to your course content. For example, in a literature
course, you could place the first few letters of a character's name in a box to refer to
this character.
PRACTICE
Activity 1: Symbols
PROCEDURES
Step 1: Tell students what subject you will talk about and ask students to think
of symbols in connection with the topic.
Step 2: Ask students to discuss and compare their symbols, and add new ones if
necessary. This time you can give them the key words and students can agree on
symbols they like, but generally, students should use symbols they prefer or
invent on their own.
Step 3: Present the speech. Students take notes using their symbols.
Step 4: One student interprets based on his/her notes.
Step 5: The teacher and other students evaluate the performance of the
interpreter.
Variation: The teacher may call a student to the board and ask him/her to take
notes there so that other students can follow the procedure. You can analyze the
notes together with other students. Students can also summarize the speech in
the same language.
Follow-up: Students can make a list of symbols for different topics.
Speech 1: Muốn 'bứt phá' phải có chiến lược khoa học cụ thể
Key words: Khoa học/ Vũ trụ/ Trung Quốc/ Nga/ Mỹ/ quốc phòng/ chiến lược/
nghiên cứu/ tiên tiến/ thực tiễn/ công nghệ
Speech 2: British Petroleum
Key words: Fossil fuels/ renewable energy/ environment/ natural reserve areas/
environmental damage/ investment/ socially responsible
FEEDBACK
1. Students self-reflect and provide peer feedbacks to their classmates
2. The teacher gives specific and general comments/evaluation about students'
performance
ASSIGNMENT 1 Students revise their transcription and translation of the
speeches on "Teen smoking", “Mobile phones", and add transcription and
translation of “British Petroleum" to Assignment 1 portfolio. Assignment 1
Porfolio is due in week 8.
