Gillies in practice

An interpreter (or student interpreter?) over at this online forum is lamenting about his Gillies based note taking turning sloppy these days. Of major interest is his following remark: "The 'fact' is that it is nearly impossible for me to take notes from a fast speech (and I've been doing lots of TED speeches in consec lately, most of them are quite fast) if I try to use the subject-verb-object system. " Incidentally, what is TED? But anyway. If I remember well, Gillies doesn't argue that his method must be applied as is. The terrific value of Gillie's book is that it is the single systemic note taking laid bare for all to see down into the nitty-gritty details. It is therefore the solid ground and starting-point to think about note-taking. That's what I have discovered through teaching introductory consec the past months in Tokyo. It helps focus, whereas here in Japan at least, the many books about interpreting will deal with note-taking with a few lame pages stating that note taking is not stenotype, that you need to take only main ideas, and that each other interpreter has her own style. And you are left on your own. At JAT PROJECT Tokyo conference the other day, someone referred to an unpublished dissertation in Japanese about note taking without additional details. I wonder if Andrew Gillies sticks to his own method as well but it is the medium to concentrate on the issue and develop to some extend ones own framework. It is also the medium to talk about and make students think about note taking in a focused, constructive matter. A past student came to me a few weeks ago to say that she could not use Gillies method. I answered back that it was fine as long as it made her think hard about her own way to try and manage that essential task.