Multilingual learners’ lecture note-taking in EMI: Note quality, comprehension, and meaning-making

Despite growing interest in note quality, understanding its relationship with lecture listening comprehension remains limited, particularly in multilingual and English-medium instruction (EMI) contexts. This study investigates how multilingual learners take notes during academic lectures and explores the relationship between note quality and lecture listening comprehension. Forty-one multilingual graduate students enrolled in a TESOL program in Canada participated in the study. Participants took notes using two methods, the structured (Cornell) and conventional, while listening to academic lectures. Data from a lecture listening comprehension test and participants’ notes were analyzed using Pearson’s correlation coefficient, descriptive statistics, and regression analysis, alongside content and semiotic analysis (Flick, 2014; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006; Krippendorff, 2018). The findings show that multilingual learners generally demonstrated a solid understanding of the lecture content, despite some individual variation, and that note quality scores were positively correlated with lecture listening comprehension test scores. Participants drew on diverse linguistic resources in their notes, including their first language (L1), second language (L2) English, and translanguaging practices. They also employed a range of visual and spatial semiotic resources and note-taking strategies, including graphic organizers, arrows, underlining, headings, subheadings, circling, abbreviations, examples and sentence- and phrase-level notes. The findings underscore the importance of conceptualizing note-taking as a strategic, multilingual, and multimodal meaning-making process in EMI contexts. The study also points to the need for further research on how multilingual and semiotic note-taking practices relate to longer-term learning outcomes, as well as how explicit instructional support may influence note-taking effectiveness in EMI settings.