TAKING NOTES:
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Who is this section for?
University students come from a wide variety of backgrounds and from a wide variety of age groups – some of you may have left secondary or further education only recently, whilst others are returning to education after a long break... But no matter what your starting point, learning to take and make notes is a skill vital to your success at university and to your future career. Hopefully therefore the adjacent brief notes should help improve this skill.
When you have studied this section, you may wish to practice your note-taking skills by clicking on 'Multimedia' .
WHY?
Useful record of the main points and their source of information
Why do you take notes during a lecture? Is it to improve your speed-writing, or your dictation-taking, or to learn from the lecture?
If you find yourself trying to write down everything the lecturer says then you may have the most detailed notes in the class, but it is unlikely you will really understand any of it!
- Listen to the lecture
- Think about what is said
- Understand it
- Paraphrase it
and then write your own notes.
Helps writing assignments and examination questions
Helps with the writing of assignments with ideas, planning and organisation.
At examination time, you will have all the essential details of your lessons in a concise form making revision easier.
Helps understanding
Focuses on main points – in the correct order
Improves listening skills
Improves listening skills and the ability to pick out the important points in an argument (useful for future employment)
Writing helps to remember
This is called 'rehearsing' the material, and the more you work with the material, especially in a concise, easy to remember form, the more permanently it will remain in your mind.
Helps revision
Everything will be at hand
Gives more time for social life
Time won't be wasted on re-working materials or filling notebooks with redundant materials – just so that you can spend hours re-reading it all later.
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