During last month’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) event,  Applied Linguistics PhD student (and competition winner) Sijia Chen wowed us all with her research on the note-taking habits of interpreters. But is there a way we can apply those habits to our own note-taking in meetings or at conferences?

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“There’s a lot we can learn from the way interpreters take notes,” says Sijia. “Interpreting is very mentally challenging; when you’re listening and writing at the same time, there’s very little time to take notes and it adds a lot of pressure to the cognitive load.”

Sijia explains that note-taking skills have been taught for a very long time to interpreters, and are an essential part of their work – but that these skills haven’t transferred into other fields and disciplines.

During note-taking, there are different decisions that need to be made, and this is often a judgement call on what is most effective. But which ones help get the job done?

1. Don’t feel bound by language
When taking notes, don’t feel that you have to use language in all instances. Interpreters use a lot of symbols; they’re easy to write and time efficient. The most used are arrows, particularly when, instead of repeating notes, you can use them to link to the related passage. You shouldn’t just be writing down what you hear; you should be able to make connections between the notes. There’s also no need to write words in full, especially longer words. Instead, you can use abbreviations with the first and last letter, and phonetic spelling.

   

2. Don’t feel bound by layout
When we take notes, traditionally we write from one side of the page to the other, then start a new line. This isn’t an efficient use of space, or time; interpreters use a diagonal layout if verticle, indented and terraced lines. This way, the units of meaning are easier to identify. If you write from left to right, it’s difficult to make stops and connections to previous sections. This way, if things belong to the same meaning group, you can put them together into small boxes and arrange diagonally.

3. Don’t feel bound by the language you’re listening to
No one should feel bound to take notes in the language they’re listening to if it’s not their native language. You should always use the language that comes to your mind first for that note. This means, in some cases, writing notes in multiple languages at once, but as long as it makes sense to you, then it’s the best way to take notes.

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View Sijia’s winning Three Minute Thesis presentation on the Macquarie University Facebook page.