How To Take Good Notes

Written By Colēgia

Note-taking is one of the most fundamental skills when it comes to school. It gives us something we can look back on after and during class to provide us with a frame of reference. Being able to take good notes can make the process a lot easier which is why we want to see how we can do just that.

Use Headings

Properly titling and heading your notes is an easy way to find key topics while saving time. Part of organizing your notes involves being able to see where certain things are at any given time. Writing our headings in a different color along with making them in larger font is one way to help separate them from smaller details. Another thing we can do is make a brief table of contents for our notes on the front page for reference. We can also number each page to make it even easier. Certain concepts are more prevalent depending on the course. This is all the more reason why we need to distinguish which idea our notes focus on to make the most sense of them.

“Properly titling and heading your notes is an easy way to find key topics while saving time.”

Abbreviations Save Time

The point of our notes is so that we're best able to understand them when we need them. With that said, sometimes the pace of a lecture might be going faster than we can write. One way to help with this is by using abbreviations of words so that we're better able to keep up with things. Sometimes an abbreviation can make sense in the moment but we might not remember it later. When this happens it’s good to have a brief reference sheet of keywords that are used often to remind ourselves of this. This is especially useful for courses with complex phrasing since it can make it much easier to approach the language used within them. Time is valuable when taking notes since we might not always have enough of it to write down everything we want but abbreviations help us find a better compromise while still knowing the topic.

“One way to help with this is by using abbreviations of words so that we're better able to keep up with things.”

Bullet Points Are Crucial

An excellent way to cover multiple angles for notes is bullet points. The benefit of these is that their structure naturally lends itself towards seeing and retrieving information easier due to them effectively being a list. Visually they draw our eyes toward them by standing out from the rest of our notes and they have the added benefit of being succinct. We can also choose to expand on them if need be since they can serve as another good reference point for complex topics. They provide a form of organization and clarity that can make the process much easier. Good note-taking is more than simply writing an essay in our journals, rather it requires us to make good visual use of space so that we can make sense of it more intuitively.

Colēgia

Colēgia

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