Carole, a language teacher, has noticed that her students have difficulty concentrating when listening to a recording of people talking in a second language. Her students have difficulty recalling the information from this recording. Carole needs to help her students and has come to you for advice. Using your knowledge of the study by Andrade (doodling):

Mark scheme

Marking points from the official mark scheme (Oct/Nov 2025). The mark or mark type is shown in brackets.

1. [1] (a) Carole could give each student a piece of paper.
2. [1] (a) That has shapes on it.
3. [1] (a) They can colour/shade them in.
4. [1] (a) There should be a margin to write notes/target information.
5. [1] (a) Tell the students not to worry about being neat/their neatness (at shading).
6. [1] (a) She could ask them to focus on specific pieces of information in the listening task.
7. [1] (a) She must tell them that there will be a test after the listening tasks.
8. [1] (a) She needs to tell them not to engage in free doodling/drawing their own doodles.
9. [1] (a) Let them listen in a (dull) quiet room.
10. [2] (b) One result from the study showed that the group who doodled whilst listening to a dull telephone recording, could recall more (monitored) information/(incidental) information, showing that doodling is good for concentration/recall.
11. [2] (b) Doodling could avoid/avoids daydreaming to help concentration/aiding memory recall.
12. [2] (b) A dull quiet room will not have other sounds so concentration should be better.
13. [2] (b) Doodling can improve concentration/attention which helps improve memory recall.