Note-taking skill is important for students to be able to engage fully in academic English studies. Different note-taking formats and listening materials of different lengths affect one’s note-taking behavior, discourse comprehension and language production. After an examination of 3-4-minute academic lectures, it is found that the main effect of note-taking formats is significant, and that the outline group outperforms the other two groups, and that the group with incomplete map performs the worst. According to Field’s listening comprehension model and its final stage discourse construction processes, different note-taking formats and relevant listening tasks demonstrate different cognitive complexity. The findings indicate that the listening materials and the design of listening tasks should be attuned to the learners’ language proficiency and their note-taking behavior. It suggests the necessary integration of listening tasks derived from different note-taking formats with genre-based pedagogy and different note-taking skills so as to develop learners’ note-taking ability more effectively within the EAP context.