Re-tell Lecture: note-taking you can do in ten seconds

You hear the lecture once. If you try to write full sentences, you will still be finishing "the professor said that urban populations are growing" while the next two points go past, and your page will hold one complete thought and four missing ones.

Your notes have one job: to give you your next sentence at a glance. In the short gap before you speak you will have time to read them once, so aim for a page you can take in within about ten seconds. That means a handful of keywords, not a transcript.

Write what you would forget

Nobody marks your notes, so they can be as ugly as you like. Aim for three to five points in total, and write only these:

• The topic, in one or two words, at the top of the page.
• One keyword for each main point. If you could say the point without writing it, do not write it.
• Names and numbers exactly as you hear them, because they are the first things to vanish. Spelling does not matter, sound does.
• An arrow wherever one thing causes another: "land scarce → roofs" replaces a whole sentence.
• A "vs" or a "but" wherever the speaker turns to a problem or sets two things against each other.

A tiny abbreviation system

Six shortcuts are plenty, and they only help if you use the same ones every time:

• → leads to, causes
• ↑ ↓ increase, decrease
• = means, is the same as
• vs against, in contrast to
• + and, also
• the first letters of long words: govt, env, econ

Leave out the small words (the, a, of, to, is) completely. Grammar will bring them back when you speak.

From notes to a retelling

Here is an illustrative lecture of the kind you might hear. Have someone read it to you, or record yourself reading it, and see what notes it needs:

Notes that fit on four short lines:

• ROOF FARMS (cities)
• land scarce → veg on roofs, bldg cooler
• Marlow supermkt: herbs, transport ↓ 1/3
• problem: weight, old roofs → engineer

Then speak in four moves: the topic, the main points, an example, a close.

Real lectures are longer than this one, so treat it as the pattern and scale it up.

When you lose the thread

If you miss a point, do not stop and do not invent details. Speak in general terms and go back to your notes: "The speaker also mentioned some difficulties with this approach." A general sentence keeps your fluency going and stays true to what you heard. A made-up detail can make your content wrong.

If a picture is on the screen while the lecture plays, glance at its title and labels before you start writing. They can give you the topic and the names, which leaves your notes free for what only the audio tells you.

Practise with ten seconds

1. Record yourself reading a talk of about a minute: a news article will do, or the Marlow passage above.
2. Play it once only, and make notes as you listen.
3. When it ends, give yourself ten seconds to look at your notes. The real gap is short, and its exact length is on the screen and in Pearson's current test guide.
4. Retell the talk aloud, recording yourself, and aim to reach your closing sentence.
5. Compare with the text. Which main points did you miss, and which notes did you never use? Those unused notes are what to leave out next time.

For a note-taking method on the listening side, see a note structure for Summarize Spoken Text, and for several voices at once, keeping track of several speakers. For a timed attempt, try the practice tests on this site.