Good notes can play a huge role in your academic success, but not everyone has the ability to take them and benefit from them. With these tips and methods, you can improve your notes and grades, learning more with less effort.
Steps
Method 1 of 4: Purpose and Contents
Step 1. Consider the matter
What kind of notes to take and how will partially depend on the type of subject. According to the topic covered and based on the proposed format, you will also need to focus your attention on different types of information.
- You may be taking notes at a conference or work assignment, or you may need to extract them from a text. Each of these formats requires you to proceed in a certain way. A lesson, for example, is quick and you will need to take notes quickly and efficiently.
- The science notes will be very different from those on the human sciences. You could take them in history, which will have more of a narrative tone, or in chemistry, which will focus on formulas and concepts.
Step 2. Consider your purpose
Why are you taking notes? Your ultimate goal will also affect how you proceed. It will play a vital role in determining what content you need to learn and what will be the most effective way to learn it.
- Test. If you work with introductory material to a test, you will want to capture a lot of information as efficiently as possible. Focus on key terms, generic concepts, or important facts and events. Try to know in which format you will be given the test, in order to guess what types of information you need to study.
- Written work. If you are taking notes that will be used in writing an essay, focus on the information that is needed. Take notes to complete a draft of your document or, if you don't have a brief description, look for relevant topics and information.
Step 3. Benefits
Taking notes offers you clear benefits. It will give you a guide to remember everything later, but it will also help you process the content. By having to think about what's important and how it should be organized, you'll learn much more efficiently. Several studies have shown that students who work on larger notes do better than those who write everything verbatim.
Method 2 of 4: Lesson
Step 1. Basics
Taking notes is different from writing what the teacher just said, word for word. You will need to sit down so that you can take notes easily. Sit where you are sure you can hear and see. You also need to make sure you have enough desk space so you can write down your notes. If you're prone to distraction, you'd better sit away from your friends or you could sit close to agree on collaborative note-taking.
Step 2. Draft
When the teacher speaks, write down what he is saying. Make a note of when a new topic begins and then note each new sub-category that is introduced. Enter information and details when you have time. Examples of drafts can be easily found on the Internet: read them, to get an idea of the scheme to follow.
Each lesson should have its own page or series of pages. This will help you keep your notes organized. To be able to find them more easily later, be sure to put the date and title of the different sections
Step 3. Terms and concepts
Write down any terms or concepts that are completely new or unfamiliar to you. They should be written separately from the rest of your notes, either on an adjacent page or in a separate notebook.
- For science notes, it may be easier to insert small illustrations or graphics to supplement the written notes. Copy the pictures used during the lesson or draw your intuition thanks to your understanding of the information.
- Write the terms in a dictionary style, with the word followed by the definition. Make sure they are not randomly scattered among the annotations so that you can find them and study them later.
Step 4. Use abbreviated forms
The key to taking useful notes is to use or develop a shorthand system. With this method, you choose to write a couple of letters or symbols that actually represent much longer words. By reducing the number of characters, you will be able to write faster: you will be able to keep up with the teacher and have more time to listen and absorb the content of the lesson.
For example, you could write "st" instead of "mostly" or "->" instead of "imply". It is also possible to use abbreviations for family terms or acronyms for official names
Method 3 of 4: Assignments
Step 1. Scientific laboratory
To take notes in this area, you need to start by sketching the experiment. Make sure each lab has its own page. The most important thing is to take notes in real time, so as not to lose valuable information, avoiding remembering them incorrectly later. If possible, draw illustrations and graphics to visually represent information that you can't put into words well.
Step 2. Mathematics
The main key to math notes is to make each step clear. Write down in detail what you should do at each step and why. Take note of when things don't work out and, if you can, illustrate with equations and expressions. When you have found the final solution and the correct methods, underline them so that you can refer to them later.
Step 3. Art
For drawing assignments, you can make visual notes of your creation process. This will help you think using your own work, rather than wasting time or wasting on ideas that won't go anywhere. This will also help you see gaps in your ideas. You will also be able to think critically about what you like and why.
- Sketch possible settings and configurations. Mark the best aspects of each and eliminate what doesn't work. Take note of how other works you like or that fit what you are working on are composed. Write down the characteristics that make those compositions such an original and effective work.
- Compile lists of themes or topics you want to represent. If your work is meant to communicate a new message, take notes on what exactly you want to say and how you intend to convey your message. If the art object is of a commercial nature, test its credibility and reliability in your notes before inserting it into the final drawing.
Method 4 of 4: Text
Step 1. Define the terms
According to the different subjects, separately, you should keep at hand a list of terms that you are not familiar with. Give them a definition and, if you like, list the pages on which they appear or are particularly relevant. This will help you come back to the text later for clarification if you get confused.
Step 2. List the concepts
On another page, you may want to outline short outlines of the most important concepts. This process will help you keep track of the ideas that play a relevant role in the text you are reading. This list will also allow you to simplify complex ideas.
Give a detailed explanation of all the concepts: how they came about, important people to associate them with, and key events. If ideas have changed over time, specify it and briefly highlight how it happened
Step 3. Compile a rough outline
Start with a general idea of what you are trying to learn. Use a copy of the lecture notes or a draft of the work you want to write. When, in the text, you see information that you think is relevant to a topic according to your outline, write it down and make a note of the page number.
Taking note of the page numbers from which the information is extracted is very important, especially when drafting documents. This will save you from having to scroll back through all the text later to correctly quote the information
Step 4. Color coding
Using different colors for the text is probably the easiest way to take notes, even if it requires almost no writing. This method will help you visualize information clearly and organize it. It can be easily adapted to a draft, for writing essays.
- If you're reading on your computer, you can use highlighting tools to color the different sections. Assign a color to each of the topics in your outline and then, when you find relevant information in the text, mark them with that color.
- If you're reading a physics book, you can certainly mark the text with a highlighter. It may be easier, however, to use post-its in different colors. These colorful stickers can help you navigate the pages and find exactly what you are looking for.
Advice
- Do not write roughly or illegibly - it will make your notes difficult to read and possibly unusable at a later time.
- Remember not to write everything down. Think about what is important and what you will need to know later.
- Highlight a certain word, if necessary, so that you stay focused on your test or essay.
- When you study a list of terms, you will memorize them more easily if you learn them in small groups. Only study four or five terms at a time until you have mastered them perfectly. Only then should you move on to the next group.
- Use the new vocabulary you are learning, both in your speech and in your written notes. This will help you strengthen them in your mind.
