How to Take Notes

Taking Notes

Taking notes is a huge part of studying process. Teachers give students lots of information to absorb, but the bad news is that without repeating all the data you will easily forget it. Do you remember ancient Latin quote «Repetitio est mater studiЕЌrum»? It means that repeating is directly connected with studying and these two processes are inseparable. Thus, notes that we take during classes are the main source of knowledge left for us to reread and think about when we get back home. We can surely use Internet or library books as well, but taking notes is more convenient and can actually save your time. You will see a positive result as soon as you learn the right way of recording information and this online essay will help you with it.

Pieces of Advice on Taking Notes

  1. 1. Concentrate. Don’t try to make a couple of things at the same time. For example, never take notes and talk to someone around at the same time. Things outside can easily distract you from learning, but your main purpose in the class is to study. Leave all the problems and talks for a break time.
  2. 2. Don’t try to write down everything you hear. You do not necessarily need to write all the data, but only those parts, which are the most important in your opinion. Teachers can sometimes ask students to remember a particular piece of information or ask to underline it in your copybook, but it happens rarely.
  3. 3. Create your own system of abbreviation and symbols. For example, you can write «p-le» instead of «people», «go-ent» instead of «government». Apart from that, you can use simple symbols for different objects. For example, «λ» for «people», «+» for the word «plus/additional» etc. Your imagination is the main source of help for you here.
  4. 4. Use colors. They can help you to find out the most important information in case you wrote 10 pages and need to see key points of written. You can use red color to underline a name of lecture, keywords, the most important information, names etc. Also, you can use green color to underline dates, numbers, formulas etc. Anyway, it is only up to you which colors to choose and what for. Another point to mention is that your notes shouldn’t look too colorful, as it may distract you as well.
  5. 5. Structure your material. Your notes shouldn’t look chaotic. You can split a text into paragraphs and subparagraphs. Trust us, if your notes are chaotic, in a month or two you won’t be able to understand anything from them, but if they have some structure it will save much of your time.
  6. 6. Try to have legible handwriting. This advice will prevent you from misunderstandings and a huge wastage of time trying decipher everything you wrote in a hurry.

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