Effective Note-Taking
One of the biggest challenges facing students beginning higher level studies (AS/A2 LEVELS IN THE UK) is learning how to take proper notes.
Many will begin by trying to write down everything from a book but cutting out the occasional word. Rewriting is not an option for more advanced studies - such as A Levels or degrees, where the sheer amount of reading you'll have to do makes it impossible.
Even if it were possible, it would nevertheless be counter-productive. Good note-taking is about breaking information down, drawing connections, simplifying, distilling large amounts of information into small chunks which serve three primary purposes.
- To enable recall of the main points of the original text/subject area
- To enable simple and effective revision in the coming days, weeks and months.
- To encourage your mind to build connections between what you have just read and other texts/subject areas you have read/studied or will read/study in the future.
With that in mind, good notes need to:
- Capture the essential points/facts being made
- Cite the most relevant examples contained in the text
- Break any arguments being put forward into its most simple sequence
This requires proper reading of the text at the outset. My method is to read through first jotting only pointers on a piece of paper. Sometimes, those jottings form the basis of my notes. More often than not, I will then re-read making my notes. By way of example, lets suppose we've just read a text book about the causes of the French Revolution. We're new to the French Revolution, so we know virtually nothing about it. We may therefore want to take a number of different notes which will serve different purposes. In this example, we might try drawing together a simple time-line of events on one page and a summary of the causes put together in the book on another.
Our study notes might look something like this:
Time-line of French Revolution: 1789 - 1799
Estates General 1789
National Assembly 1789
National Constituent Assembly 1789 - 1791
Storming the Bastille - July 14, 1789
Legislative Assembly 1791-1792
War against Prussia 1792-1797
National Convention 1792 - 1795
King Louis XVI guillotined - Jan 21, 1793
Reign of Terror 1793-1794
The Directory 1795 - 1799
Causes of the French Revolution
Economic:
Unmanageable National Debt after years of war - and unfair tax system
High unemployment and bread prices
Famine
Social:
Famine
Conspicuous consumption of nobility e.g the court of Marie Antionette
Rising fear of crime
Resentment of clerical privilege
Resentment of noble privilege amongst the growing mercantile classes whose status was less than their peers in the Netherlands/Great Britain
Political:
Failure of King and advisors to deal with the problems facing France
Distrust/hatred of Marie Antoinette
Resentment of absolutism
Cultural:
Growth of radicalism - particularly in Paris e.g newspapers, libels and the theatres
Enlightenment influences - e.g Philosophes
Period of innovation and science - hot air balloon flights
So, we've taken 80,000 words in the book and distilled them to just 150. If you wanted to remember the entire book, these notes would not help. But they do breakdown the information contained in the book into tiny blocks that are easy to remember and will trigger recall. These notes will also help inform your other reading. For example, if you were to go on and read Simon Schama's Citizens, which is a narrative of the French Revolution, you would be struck by his pulling apart of the causes listed above. You would find that many nobles were among the leading merchants, many nobles lived in squalor similar to the peasants and far from hankering for regime change most of France wanted a stronger degree of order to control famine, control crime and stabilise the price of bread.
What I hope this example shows is the importance of breaking information down to its bear essentials in your note-taking and the importance of breaking that information down analytically into chronologies, themes and so on. Get that right and you'll be well on your way.
