The present study investigated the extent to which reviewing notes, after viewing an academic lecture, contributes to vocabulary learning. A total of 128 Chinese university students were randomly assigned into five groups: conventional note-taking with immediate review, conventional note-taking with delayed review, guided note-taking with immediate review, guided note-taking with delayed review, and a control group. Knowledge of twenty-eight words encountered in the lecture was measured. A counterbalanced form-recall and meaning-recall test was used through pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest. Results showed that (1) immediately after the treatment, taking guided notes played a larger role in vocabulary learning over reviewing notes on both form- and meaning-recall tests; in contrast, conventional note-taking appears to depend more on reviewing notes for form-recall but not meaning-recall, (2) reviewing notes after an interval in guided note-taking contributed to significant vocabulary gains on the form-recall test. Additionally, the analyses revealed that writing unknown words, learners’ comprehension levels, and their prior vocabulary knowledge had a significant impact on learning. However, review schedule, frequency of occurrence, target words presented in guided notes, and target words shown in slides did not significantly influence learning.