To do well on the listening section of the CELPIP exam, you must master note-taking!

This episode will give you effective strategies to improve your listening skills and ensure you capture important information while you take notes during the test.

You'll discover practical tips, such as using the five W's—who, what, when, where, and why—to structure your notes for clarity and efficiency. Regular practice is a must! To do so, listen to podcasts or local Canadian news while taking notes to build your confidence. Remember, speed is crucial, so focus on jotting down key points and abbreviations rather than complete sentences to keep pace with the audio.

Preparing for the listening section of the CELPIP exam can be daunting, but mastering the art of note-taking can significantly improve your performance. The episode emphasizes the importance of not only listening but also actively engaging with the material through effective note-taking strategies. The episode concludes with practical advice on how to structure notes efficiently and the necessity of daily practice to hone these skills, ensuring that listeners are well-prepared for the exam.

Takeaways:

• Taking notes during the CELPIP listening section is essential for success, regardless of your listening skills.
• Practice listening and note-taking simultaneously using various English audio resources to improve.
• Organize your notes effectively using methods like tables or bullet points to enhance clarity.
• Use the 'five W's' method to structure your notes: who, what, when, where, and why.
• Speed is crucial in note-taking; avoid writing full sentences and utilize abbreviations instead.
• Your notes are personal and should only make sense to you, not the examiners.

Previous Episode Mentioned on how to improve your listening skills in English. (#90)

Get Your Free Note-taking Resource:

• To download your free note-taking template mentioned in the episode, just go to: celpipsuccess.com/resources

What should I do to practice for the listening section of the CELPIP exam? This week? I actually had two people write to ask me about this very topic.

So I thought I would devote today's episode to helping you with the most important strategies you can be working on to get ready for the listening section of the celpip. Well, hello there and welcome to the Speak English Fearlessly podcast.

This is the podcast for motivated English learners who want to speak English fearlessly and learn practical tips and strategies to conquer the CELPIP exam.

I also love to feature encouraging interviews with regular people, people just like you, who are working towards becoming fluent in English so we can learn from their experiences together. Who am I? My name is Aaron Nelson, and I've been an English teacher for over 17 years, and I'm a certified CELPIP trainer.

If you're just joining us, today is the first day that you decided to download an episode of this podcast. I'm so glad that you're here.

I hope that today's episode will give you some great ideas and strategies that will help you as you're getting ready for the CELPIP exam. And if you are a return listener, you've been here before, my friend. I'm so glad to see you. I'm glad that you keep coming back.

Thank you for listening. I also hope that today's episode will give you lots of great ideas that will help you get ready for your exam as well.

So, whether you're a new listener or a return listener, I guess what I really want to say is I'm so glad that you're here today. All right, so the first thing that I want to make sure that you are doing all the time to get ready for the listening section of the CELPIP exam.

Might sound boring, but it will be the game changer for you on the exam, no matter how strong your listening skills are. And I need to underscore something here.

Even if you think you have amazing listening skills, you need to do this if you want to succeed on this section of the exam. Can you guess what I'm about to be talking about? I'll give you a hint.

You need to use the pen and paper you'll be given on the day of your exam to do this. Have you got it yet? If you're saying note taking, then you're absolutely correct. And I was right, wasn't I?

Note taking is likely a big, boring topic, but it's vital to your success on the exam, especially the listening section. Now, you might be thinking, yeah, I'M going to ace the listening section. Listening is one of my strengths. With my English skills, I.

I don't need to take notes. That argument sounds mighty tempting to believe, but let me paraphrase a comment I read on a Celpip Listening Skills webinar.

It said, I've lived in Canada since I was three. Listening is the hardest part of the exam because it's more about your memory skills versus your listening skills.

That, my friend, is simply not true. And in that particular webinar, the hosts took some time to demonstrate that you simply can't remember everything that you're listening to.

Notes are so important. So unless you have like a photographic memory or perfect recall of what you hear, you must take notes.

For one the audio you'll be listening to to answer questions will be anywhere from 40 seconds to one and a half minutes. And I guarantee you, you won't be able to remember all the details from what you heard.

There's just too much information flowing your way to keep straight.

So do yourself a favor and don't listen to that tempting thought that tells you you'll just be able to listen well and answer the questions without taking notes. Okay? Okay. So take notes. You'll thank me later.

Okay, so that leads to a really important question that I've heard from students and that I've read in countless comments in the Celpip webinars. It goes something like I suck at listening and writing at the same time. If I start writing notes, I get lost with the audio.

I can only focus on one thing at a time. What do I do? The answer refer back to the previous point I just made. You need to take notes if you want to do well on this section of the exam.

You really do. That means in order to get better at listening to something and taking notes at the same time, are you ready?

You absolutely need to be practicing it if you want to get better. I know, I know. That's mind blowing advice, isn't it? But my friend, I can't mention this enough.

Note taking will be a big part of you doing well on this part of the exam. If you feel like you get lost while trying to take notes. Like you can only focus on listening or writing your notes, but you struggle to do both.

You have to devote time to practice. Because good news, this is a skill you can get better at. You just have to practice it. How do you practice that with?

Well, try listening to your favorite podcast or your favorite audiobook in English. And by the way, back in episode 90, I gave out some Suggestions that you might want to check out for sources to listen to.

I'll link to it in my show Notes Today. You should also practice listening to your local Canadian news on the radio.

The CBC is a great resource for this and that's also mentioned in episode 90.

Just make sure that whatever you listen to, you're listening to Canadian accents when you're practicing, because that's what you're going to find on the exam.

So as you're listening to whatever you're listening to your favourite podcast, your favourite audiobook, your favourite news station, whatever, make sure it's Canadian content and then make sure you're taking notes. And I want to share with you my absolute favorite note taking strategy.

I think it's super simple to do and super simple to remember, and that is the five W's.

And just in case you're not sure what those are, try to answer as you're listening, who the audio is about, what is happening, when it's happening, who, where it takes place and why it's happening, who, what, when, where and why. Count them. Those are five and each one begins with a W. That's why it's called the five W's. So here's how to do it.

When you're ready to take notes, try dividing your paper into a table with five spaces. For each header of your table, write one of the five W's.

And by the way, I've got a free resource for you today that has fillable template versions of what I'm talking about here.

Just in case you can't write this down where you are to grab that resource and it's absolutely free, just go to celpipsuccess.com resources that's celpipsuccess.com and look for the Listening Skills template file. Okay, back to today's topic. So if you find it hard to listen and write notes, you must practice.

And the simple way you can actually get great practice with this skill is by listening to your favorite English audio and try to answer the five W's about it as you listen. And once again, the five W's are who, what, when, where and why.

At first, if this is super challenging for you, give yourself permission to pause and replay the segments of your audio so you can get your notes down. But my friend, you can't stay doing it like this. Remember, on the celpip, you won't be able to pause or replay the audio.

You'll hear it only once and then you'll need to answer questions about it. So make sure, you quickly begin to practice in the same way, writing while you listen without stopping or replaying your audio.

But like I said before, if you're just getting started with this and you want to build your confidence a little bit, it's okay to spend the first few practice sessions pausing and replaying so that you can make sure that you're taking good notes. But like I said, don't camp out here.

Make sure that you advance to the point of listening and writing at the same time, because that's what you really need to get good at. And in order for those skills at listening and note taking at the same time to improve, you need to do this activity a little bit each day.

It doesn't have to be for hours and hours.

I promise you that if you can devote, you know, 10, 15 minutes of practice at this each day for a couple of weeks, you'll begin to see some really cool results. I guarantee it. I already mentioned the table format for the five W's, and that's a really good way to organize your notes.

But do you know that there's another way that you can organize your notes? You can try using circles. One circle on your paper for each W question you're trying to answer using a table or labeled circles.

And by the way, this will also be in today's free note taking guide. It will help you to quickly locate your notes when it's time to respond to certain questions on the exam.

And that leads to my next suggestion for you. I've taken notes before that had words and phrases all over my paper, like everywhere. In fact, I was reading some notes that I took in a class.

I can't remember what the class was for, but I found this old notebook and I was looking at this note page that I had taken and I had words going all over the edges of the paper. Some of it was upside down, some of it was. It was just going crazy all over the page.

And I was just looking at it and thinking, what in the world was I thinking? Yeah, don't do that to yourself. Don't have your notes going everywhere.

Because having your notes everywhere is going to make it really difficult for you to find the information later when you need it.

And you'll have to read the entire page to find what you're looking for, which is a big problem on the CELPIP exam because you're working against the clock. So you need to have your notes well organized. Don't write them all over the place. A table will help you to do that.

So will creating Circle headings that you fill in, like what I was sharing before. But you can also use bullet points, one point per idea.

And make sure that your bullet points are in the order that you hear the information that you're taking notes on. You've got to make sure that you keep your points in order. This is going to help you on the exam because the questions will also come in order.

They won't be asking you questions all over the place in the audio. They will go in sequence as it happened in the content that you're working with. Does that make sense? Like it's going to ask you things in order.

So make sure that you are keeping notes in order. Keeping your notes organized will help you find what you're looking for quickly. And that leads to my final point that I want to share with you today.

Speed is vital. Never, ever write complete sentences when you're taking notes. This is very similar to when you're brainstorming.

The idea in note taking is to write just enough that it's going to trigger your memory later. So that means don't write complete sentences. You just don't have time. Instead, use abbreviations or try using symbols.

You can also try writing words, but without vowels. Like remove the vowel out of each word. You've got to be fast or you're going to miss what comes next in the audio.

Because remember, like what we said before, there's no pausing this. You have to listen and write at the same time. And by the way, I've got some great news for you.

When it comes to your notes, your notes are totally for you. Don't worry about grammar or spelling or the messiness or the neatness of it, or writing in complete sentences.

The only thing that it needs to be is something that makes sense to you. And nobody else, not even the examiners are going to see this. So neatness doesn't even matter. As long as it works for you is all that counts.

So to summarize, remember, you need to take notes. And this is true. Even if you think that you have strong listening skills already.

I promise you notes will help you to do better in this section of the exam. If you feel like you're not really good at listening and taking notes at the same time, I've got good news for you.

The more you practice it, the better you will get. And you don't need to practice for hours on end.

If you spend five or ten minutes a day working on this skill, I promise you that within a couple of weeks, you'll start to see some big changes happening. How to practice use the 5W method. It's one of my favorite ones.

As you're listening to your favorite audio, try to answer who, what, when, where and why about what you're hearing and write it down. Of course. And as you're writing, make sure that you're keeping your ideas well organized so that you can find your ideas later.

And remember, speed is vital. Never write in complete sentences. Use abbreviations. When possible, use symbols and write without vowels. This will help you to write faster.

And remember, your notes are only for you. No examiner will ever read it. It just has to make sense for you. Well my friend, that's it for today's episode.

If you would like to download the free listening guide with the fillable note taking templates I mentioned today, just go to celpipsuccess.comresources to download your copy. That's celpipsuccess.com resources. Thank you for listening and I'll see you again next Tuesday. Bye.