I.

Advice for Students: Taking Notes that Work- Introduction

A.

Note taking
1.

Students were never taught how to take notes.

a)

2.

Teachers assume you know how to take effective notes.

Everyone benefits from taking good notes.

a)
No matter what career you are in, there is always information
that you need to know and remember.

3.

The ability to take effective, meaningful notes is a crucial skill.

a)

II.

Notes help us remember what we have forgotten.

What Do Notes Do?

A.
One of the reasons people have trouble taking effective notes is that theyre
not really sure what notes are for.
1.

Notes are not meant to be a word for word recording of a lecture.

a)
Trying to get every last fact and figure down like that leaves no
room for thinking about what youre writing and how it fits together.

2.
The purpose of note-taking is simple: to help you study better and
more quickly.
a)
Notes dont have to contain everything; they have to contain the
most important things.
III.

What To Write Down

A.

Write what you dont know not what you do know.

1.

Dates of events
a)
Dates allow you to a) create a chronology, putting things in order
according to when they happened, and b) understand the context of an
event.

2.

Names of people
a)

3.

Associating names with key ideas helps to remember ideas better.

Theories

a)
Any statement of a theory should be recorded theories are the
main points of most classes.
4.

Definitions
a)
Like theories, definitions are the main points and are important
in many fields.

5.

Arguments and debates

a)
Any list of pros and cons, any critique of a key idea, both sides of
any debate related in class or your reading should be recorded.

6.

Images and exercises

a)
A short description of a painting or a short statement about what
the class did will help remind you and reconstruct the experience.

7.

Other stuff
a)
Just about anything a professor writes on a board should
probably be written down, unless its either self-evident or something
you already know.

8.

Your own questions

a)
This will help you remember to ask the professor or look
something up later, as well as prompt you to think through the gaps in
your understanding.

IV.

Note-Taking Techniques
A.

Outlining
1.
Outlining is an effective way to capture the hierarchical relationships
between ideas and data.
a)
Outlining is a great way to take notes from books, because the
author has usually organized the material in a fairly effective way, and
you can go from start to end of a chapter and simply reproduce that
structure in your notes.
2.

For lectures, however, outlining has limitations.

a)
The relationship between ideas isnt always hierarchical, and the
instructor might jump around a lot.
b)
May lose the relationship between what the professor just said
and what she said before since it may relate back to an earlier statement
on a different page or spot of your notes.

B.

Mind-mapping
1.
For lectures, a mind-map might be a more appropriate way of keeping
track of the relationships between ideas.
a)
Main topics and subtopics can be easily connected and expound
upon even if they are not in chronological order. All you have to do is
add a branch or connect 2 ideas to another subtopic.

C.

The Cornell System

1.
The Cornell System is a simple but powerful system for increasing
your recall and the usefulness of your notes.
a)
Divides note taking in 3 sections: Small section for Cues, Large
section for normal notes/outline/mind-map, and bottom section for a
brief summary of the material you just covered.

V.

Closing Thoughts
A.

Your system has to reflect the way you think.

1.
Some people use highlighters or colored pens; others an elaborate
system of post-it notes.
2.
Discover your thinking process and how it works then find or create a
note taking technique that suits you.