Facilitating Vocabulary Note Taking on Computers Through the Deep Processing Strategy

The recording of words in a vocabulary notebook is regarded as a plausible and efficient method for learners, since they can organize and manage the individual words they wish to acquire. The wide appeal of portable computers has resulted in a rapid increase in taking notes via computers across college campuses. Although computers can increase transcription speed when students take notes, they are also detrimental to learning, because students tend to mindlessly transcribe results, resulting in shallow processing. To resolve the issue, in this study, an association-based strategy is introduced to assist learners in compiling vocabulary notebooks. To assess the strategy, an experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of the proposed nonlinear associations note-taking method with respect to the traditional linear outline method. The results show that both strategies could increase vocabulary retention; however, the associations format was significantly better than the outline format. In addition, th...