Contemporary Topics 3: Advanced Listening and Note-Taking Skills

We use this book in my English for Academic Purposes class to improve note-taking skills. The book explores several different subject areas, so the interest level of my students is high. Each unit contains note-taking tips (the tips are cumulative, building on each aother) for example: Organize main ideas and supporting details Note numbers and statistics Use abbreviations and symbols etc. Listening to a lecture and being able to extrapolate relevant or crucial information is the most important comprehension skill for ESL students in a university setting. This book (with the teacher's pack and cd, if not available here, can be ordered from longman.com)delivers in more ways than one. Each unit also ends with several projects, so you can adapt the book for longer or shorter terms (i.e., Spring or Summer). The companion website also has several links directly related to the reading in each chapter, which helps to reinforce students' vocabulary and see it in a "real-world" setting. As far as timing, it usually takes about one week (five days) to go through a unit, without doing the projects. You could probably do a unit every three days, or cover a unit in eight days if you were so inclined. Speaking as an ESL teacher, if you're having a hard time deciding which listening text to get for your course, this is IT!