Notetaking is a useful skill that assists an interpreter with their memory in consecutive interpreting. However, the useful tool may pose a major obstacle to interpreter trainees. There is a considerable amount of research available that provides general knowledge and specific examples of what and how to note (Lee 2013, Gillies 2017). Yet, the research does not seem to provide enough resources in support of notetaking; and some researchers even suggest employing the task is mostly personal preference (Choi 1998/2004: 91, Jones 1998/2002). This noticeable divide in perspective and lack of explicit illustrations posit a need for additional exploration on the topic. Particularly, meaning – not words – is paramount in taking notes (Choi 1998/2004: 82), which should be specifically presented in a systematic manner. Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) prioritizes “meaning” in analyzing language. The purpose for this study is to provide trainees with a method of notetaking using SFL. The study has two parts: one is to create a notetaking strategy employing SFL’s meaning-based classification of verbs; the second part is to validate the theory by analyzing trainees’ test results. In SFL, verbs are considered the key constituent in a clause (Butt et al. 2000) and, in English, they are categorized into six groups (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014). These six groups are the basis from which the criteria and guidelines for writing verbs are derived. Part one of this study explores using SFL’s verb classification in notetaking.