In this paper, the author first lists the course objectives for basic interpretation course at undergraduate level. Then the problems Chinese students encountered in learning note taking for consecutive interpretation (CI) between English and Chinese are analyzed. It is found that they need to solve different problems when English is the source language and when English is the target language. Furthermore, a comparison between notes and subsequent CI performance, via a rough ranking system, shows that beginners often rely too heavily on notes, and that good notes sometimes do not yield good CI performance. Finally, relevant pedagogical and research issues are discussed.