The Effects of Note-Taking Skills Instruction on Elementary Students’ Reading

ABSTRACT

The authors investigated the effects of a 5-week note-taking skills instructional program on note-taking and reading comprehension performance of elementary students. The participants included 349 fourth-grade students from 2 elementary schools in Taiwan. The Note-Taking Instruction group received approximately 40 min of note-taking skills instruction per week for 5 weeks in contrast to the free note-taking group and the free-recall writing group who did not receive any instruction. A note-taking evaluation task and a comprehension test were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the instruction on students’ performance in note taking and reading comprehension, respectively. The study yielded 2 findings: first, teaching students a note-taking strategy significantly improved their performance in note taking and reading comprehension, and second, poor readers showed the greatest gains in note-taking skills with instruction.

Keywords:

• note-taking
• reading strategies
• strategy instruction

FUNDING

The authors would like to thank Ministry of Education, Taiwan, for financially supporting this research under Contract No. 988106.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wan-Chen Chang

Wan-Chen Chang is a postdoctoral researcher at Research Center for Science and Technology for Learning, National Central University in Taiwan. Her current research focuses on early writing and using technology to enhance writing.

Yu-Min Ku

Yu-Min Ku is an Associate Professor in the Graduate Institute of Learning and Instruction and the Center for Teacher Education at National Central University, Taiwan. Her current research focuses on understanding children's vocabulary acquisition and literacy development and improving elementary reading instruction.