How to Take Notes Ⅰ. Reasons for Note-taking -- (1)to memory: s

Good morning. I’d like to begin this lecture by saying how pleased I am that so many of you have come to the first of our study skills sessions this term. Today I’ll talk about how to take notes. Information presented in class often contains the central concepts of the course and the material most likely to be included on exams. Yet, students frequently do not realize the importance of notetaking. Note-taking is quite an interesting topic to discuss. The note-taking process, like the learning process, involves more than just what happens in lectures. It is a process that requires you to do things before, during and after lectures.
  First I would ask, why do you take notes? I think you might consider two reasons.
  First, notes are an aid to memory. Obviously if you are reading for a long essay over a period of weeks, or for two or three essays simultaneously, then you must have some system of sorting and recalling the information you will need when you finally come to plan and write the essay.
  Second, your notes provide the raw material on which your mind must work in relation to your set essay topic. And you will need certain types of information, such as: facts, figures and direct quotations. They must be available quickly and accurately. When you take notes, the process of doing it helps you to summarize ideas and arguments, select points relevant to your purpose, and finally understand and interpret the original source.
  So note-taking is an important stage in developing your understanding of your topic. Your notes will provide the basis for your thinking and the materials for your essay. You may ask: when do you take notes? It really depends on your own purpose and the stage of reading you have reached.
  In your early stages of reading when you are skimming material of a general nature, you will probably not want to make any notes at all, until after you have finished your skimming and have got a feel for the subject. Then you may find it useful to go back and make notes on the points or sections within the general survey which seemed important to you. At a later stage of reading, when you can recognize to underline key points or make marginal notes, you will probably want to do this with essential source materials or original texts which you must study in detail and refer to constantly. Now we come to the question: what do you note, and how much do you take notes from reading?
  We often consider the following three ways:
  First what is the writer’s intention in the passage? You know the writer has selected and structured his material to suit his intentions, but these are unlikely to be precisely the same focus as your essay topic. Therefore, while recognizing the writer’s own purpose, you must sift his information and ideas according to your own interests. The same hold true for lectures and tutorials.
  And then, the discipline in which you are working. In disciplines in which you are working with original sources, for example: History or Literature, you will have to include many direct quotations in notes. As you will want to include some of these quotations in your essay, you must copy them with absolute accuracy. You must remember to attribute the work to the original writer, too. In other disciplines you will more often make s summary of the passages you read.
  The last is your own purpose in relation to you essay topic. If your purpose is clear, you can select and record relevant material as much detail as you want. Some students insist that they prefer always to take detailed notes because "it is all so interesting" or "it may come in handy later or the book is an standard text and so it is worthwhile spending time on it." Well, maybe--but in practical terms you seldom have time.
  Now I’ll deal with our last question: how do you take notes?
  There are three general principles that apply to all methods of compiling notes:
  1. Clear identification, Your notes must be clearly headed with all the bibliographical details you may later need, when you want to use these materials in your essay. In practice this means you must record the author, title, place of publication, publisher and edition, and date, And next to each key point or direct quotation you must note the exact page reference.
  2. Flexible system: You should record your notes in such a way that it is easy to rearrange them for the purpose of your essay. Notes made on loose-leaf paper and card have the advantage that they can be shuffled, combined and reorganized at the planning and writing stages of your essay.
  3. Room for comment: Wide margins are useful. As you build up your materials you will find you want to add cross-references to other sources. You may also want to include your own comments or reactions to the text, or just indicate that a certain point may be crucial to your essay.