Helping Sarah Think or “Stop and Think” Note-taking
By: Leah Goldberg
It all started with Sarah
At the university where I work, the students study English mostly online and then take in-class final exams. Some do well during the semester but then miserably fail the exam, and they often appeal the result. The appeal process is conveniently anonymous and done completely online, and only the most insistent students come to my office for in-person feedback. I hate it. The students are emotional, feedback hardly builds any skills, and we don’t change the grade anyway. I see it as a waste of time.
A lady whom I will call Sarah was one such case. After dozens of conversations on the phone and a failed appeal, she invited herself to my office for a feedback session. She was a short lady in her 40s, with bleached hair and a face one can’t recall the next day, warm and shy like a chamomile tea. What was unusual was that she arrived with her husband. He was guarding her. He said he wanted to understand what he had paid for, and why his wife Sarah, who spoke decent English and had studied so hard, couldn’t pass the exam. He demanded answers. The thought crossed my mind that we had security guards on site.
We started reviewing the exam. As we went question by question, I saw meticulously translated words, attempts to put them together into sentences, and to make sense of what she read—and her completely unrelated answers. Sarah wasn’t getting it. She did not understand what she read; that is, she understood it incorrectly. She seemed to understand English words and sentences but did not grasp the meaning of the text. Like many of us teaching academic English, I wondered whether we put the line between reading and comprehension too far on the comprehension side. I was baffled. I avoided making eye contact with Sarah’s husband.
I showed her how different parts of the texts were connected, reminded her of reading strategies, and corrected the translation a bit. But deep down, I did not know how to help Sarah. I had no strategy or trick to teach her how to think. I wasn’t sure that after all these explanations, feedback, and extra practice she would do better on the exam.
Sarah left my office thinking she did everything right but was short on luck. I failed to explain what went wrong for her and generated some extra revenue for the university as Sarah repeated the course. Did I have any better options? A few months later, the “Stop and Think” note-taking approach, or STN, gave me one.
What is Stop and Think Note-taking?
The idea behind the Stop and Think note-taking is simple: when reading or listening to a text, you stop for a second, reflect on what you have read or heard, and make a note. You can do it in your own tongue. That is, you take breaks to externalize your thinking. Then, you review and label your notes.
Note-taking is a centuries-old and generally recommended learning strategy. So what’s the novelty here? The Stop and Think note-taking approach is based on the Cornell Note-Taking System, and it involves organizing notes into summaries and cues. It differs from scribbling a few lazy words for yourself and trying to decipher them later. It is also worlds apart from making verbatim notes on an electronic device. We know now that hand-written notes are more useful for studying and committing to memory than typed notes (Flanigan et al., 2024). Stop and Think note-taking is structured and guided. This type of notetaking can indeed enhance learning outcomes (Biggers & Luo, 2020). Why does it work? Students don’t multitask and engage in multiple cognitive processes that compete for their cognitive resources. They take short breaks to stop and think, and to make a note.
But is note-taking beneficial for second language learners? Aren’t the students already cognitively overloaded, or emotionally agitated in the EFL classroom? Luckily notetaking works for foreign language learners too! Jin and Webb (2022) conducted a meta-analysis on the effectiveness of note-taking while students were exposed to second language input. They concluded that “learning through note-taking was significantly more effective than learning without note-taking” (p. 404), and the effect was stronger if the students received explicit instruction on taking notes.
I didn't get it at first
My boss (G-d bless his soul) had been spearheading the implementation of STN into our new program, as a methodological approach that would align our teaching with the CEFR framework that has been adopted in Israel as it shifted away from the reading-strategies-based EAP courses. For those living outside Europe, CEFR stands for the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, and it is used to create and assess language syllabus, programs, learning material and so on. It engenders a task-based pedagogy as it describes “what language learners have to learn to do in order to use a language for communication and what knowledge and skills they have to develop so as to be able to act effectively” (Council of Europe, 2020).
My boss was lucky. He knew what he was doing and why STN was supposedly so rewarding. In contrast, much like Sarah, I didn’t get it at first. I watched the instructional video once. I didn’t completely grasp what was so special about it, but never re-watched it because it was too long for me. Still, I liked the simplicity of the two powerful keywords: stop and think. Who can argue with that? So I adopted these two words in my teaching. I would stop occasionally and prompt the students to think about what we were doing and maybe write a note. If they needed help, I would gladly explain it myself—I like being useful.
Then, as part of new course development, we had to prepare STN instructional videos for the intermediate English course. To speed things up, my boss and I worked on the video scripts together. And this is when the magic happened. I dealt with an unfamiliar text, a script in this case, and went through the “stop and think” process myself. I realized that what we are doing with STNs is facilitating students’ deeper engagement with the text—we guide the students as they externalize their thinking process. How can we externalize the thinking process? By making a note of what we understood—not just heard or read—at that moment.
We often take our understanding for granted. If we do something repeatedly, over the course of time, we start to understand it as if automatically. Our mind goes through many steps quickly, without us being fully aware of it, and we suddenly feel “I get it.”
Understanding, from the brain’s perspective, is connecting, both figuratively and literally, and it is something we do our entire lives. Stopping and thinking is a way to supercharge the connecting. In brain sciences, the neural connections that form in the brain are called synapses. The nerve cells communicate through these synapses Over time, the brain prunes the connections that don’t serve anymore and leaves pathways of the things it does. David Eagleman explains in his book The Brain: The Story of You (2015) that in a newborn baby, neurons are virtually unconnected (Picture 1), but as the baby matures and its brain gets refined through repeated exposure to environmental influences, it forms new connections or synapses extremely rapidly. However, an adult brain has fewer neural connectors than a two-year-old. Why is that? It’s due to the process of neural pruning, whereby weaker connections get eliminated, like paths in the forest that we do not use. Thus, as we mature, we have fewer but stronger connections (Eagelman, 2015, pp. 7-9). By repeating what we do, we strengthen the neural pathways and become better at what we do or think about.
Most of our students need help with learning how to understand. Many of them don’t read academic texts, listen to TED Talks, or discuss myriad global issues in a foreign language to the point where their minds form and use the familiar pathways. When they start losing track of what they hear or read, they need a simple method that guides them through the thinking process and builds those skills and pathways. They have to be able to do it independently and regardless of the text at hand. This is Stop and Think note-taking, mental work that encourages them to build connections—and not our explanations, the reiteration of strategies, or the translation of unfamiliar words. When you repeatedly stop, take a second to reflect on what you just read or heard, and process it yourself by writing a note, you begin to understand.
Your next DIY project: “Stop and Think”
I encourage you to do what I did: take a short text or video, stop from time to time to write things down, review and integrate your notes, and see what you begin to understand. You might wonder: how is ordinary note-taking different from Stop and Think note-taking? It’s different because when you take short breaks to engage in deeper thinking, something happens in your brain. You actively construct meaning and integrate information. You begin to monitor your comprehension. How do you monitor your comprehension? By externalizing your thinking through your notes. Try it and you will understand.
I didn’t know all this on the day Sarah was at my office. I sent Sarah to repeat a course. Her husband put his armor down and resolved to continue to invest in her studies. I gave him hope. A life-long fan of espresso, I now occasionally have a cup of chamomile tea—its gentle taste reminds me of the elusiveness of our comprehension. I admit to myself that I don’t always understand. I “stop and think” and make a note.
References
Biggers, B., & Luo, T. (2020). Guiding students to success: A systematic review of research on guided notes as an instructional strategy from 2009-2019. Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, 17(3). https://doi.org/10.53761/1.17.3.12
Eagleman, D. (2015). The brain: The story of you. Pantheon Books.
Council of Europe (2020). The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). Purposes of the CEFR. https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-reference-languages/uses-and-objectives
Flanigan, A. E., Wheeler, J., Colliot, T., Lu, J., & Kiewra, K. A. (2024). Typed versus handwritten lecture notes and college student achievement: A meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 36(3), 78.
Jin, Z., & Webb, S. (2024). The effectiveness of note taking through exposure to L2 input: A meta-analysis. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 46(2), 404-426. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263123000529
Leah Goldberg is EPIC (English for Purposes of International Communication) course coordinator at The Open University of Israel. She holds an EDD in Educational Leadership and Design. Leah is dedicating her efforts to transferring knowledge about the brain to the EFL classrooms.