Notes are one of the valuable entities in classroom learning. They help you by accompanying your textbook knowledge and they compliment the teaching as well. It is essential to take notes, while you are in the class because they are great for reference. Taking notes is not that simple. Here are some steps on how to take notes.
- While you are preparing for your writing piece of work, your notes can come from different source of work, like from course material, lectures, tutorials, secondary reading or set texts. You can take some information from television broadcasts, radio or experimented projects. The notes can come from your own idea or they can be a part of the essay planning process as well.
- Whatever notes you will gather for preparing the writing material will give you a detailed evidence for any kind of backup that you wish to have. You can use this for the illustrative material as well. There can be quotations, page reference that you plan to use later. Your main goal should be to make a two page outline on the topic that you wish to cover.
- Always be ready for the fact that you will make more notes than you will ever actually use them, but this is absolutely normal. During the note-making stage, you will not be sure what kind of evidence you will need. Moreover, the information gathering stage will be the one where you refine your ideas and digest them.
- Never get disappointed when you end up using only quarter or even one tenth of your own material. The proportion that you use from these notes will vary from every subject, and it will depend on your personal writing strategy as well. Just because you have not used one material, does not mean that you have wasted your efforts.
- Whenever you are taking notes from any source, always remember that you are trying to make an accurate and compressed record of the information, your own observations and the opinion of other people.
- Your main objective while making notes will be separating the most important from the least important. Keep a record of all the main issues and not the details. You will have to write some words from the original if you think you can use them in quotation. Always remember that you must keep the extracts as short as you can, unless you have to discuss a longer passage in some detail.
- Remember that you don’t have to write every word that is said in the lecture or copy all the long extracts from the books. One of the most important features of note taking is making a small digest of the originals and then translating all that information in your own words.
- Some people keep taking so many notes that they don’t understand which one to use in time. They get a feeling of drowning in the sea of knowledge or information. This problem usually arises with two common problems while note taking. The first is transcribing too much of the original and not selecting the topic of your choice.
- The only solution for this thing is that you must never be descriptive and choose only those words that are useful. Always remember one key rule that is think more, write less and be rigorously selective. You will have to keep the essay or project topic in mind. Always take down notes of those things, which have a direct relevance with your subject or question.
- The notes that you take are only for your use, but you must keep them in a neat and effective format. If you have good layout of the notes then you can recall them easily and access your notes readily.
- Once you start writing the notes, make sure that you mention the heading on your journal. You will have to write the name of the publisher, author and the edition of the book. Take an A4 size paper and never use small notes, because you can easily keep a track of all these sheets.
- Make sure that you write everything clearly and leave enough space between every note. You must never try to cram as much as you can into one page. If you keep the items separately, them you can recall them instantly. The importance of laying out the details in this manner will help you in assessing the importance of every detail.
- Try using some sort of tabulation. This will be of great help to keep everything separately. Even if the progression in the numbers is not of a great help, it will help in keeping the items distinct.
- Always remember that you must try to write one continuous prose. You must always abbreviate the notes and keep them compressed. There is no need of full grammatical sentences and always use shortened form of words. Try not to string the points together one after another on the same page. Later you will find it very difficult for untangling these things.
- You will have to come up with a logical and memorable layout. Use numbering, lettering and indentation for sub-sections and sections. Make headings and sub-headings. Good layout will be very useful for absorbing and recalling information. Most of the people use highlighters or colored inks for assisting the information they have processed.
These points will be very useful for you to make effective notes.
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