Intro, Advantages and Strategies of Note Making

In the world that we live in, we are bombarded with limitless information all the time. But not everything that we hear is worth retaining. Similarly, losing any of the vital details is also not acceptable. And recording these details is where the skill of note making helps us. So, here we will learn why and how to make a note.

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Introduction

Come to think of it note making is almost an involuntary exercise! Because whether we wish to or not but we always make note of things that we hear. So, using pen and paper to take and make notes is just an act of regularising and organising these thoughts in the most comprehensive way.

We always take down the notes from a source, therefore, while making notes we should keep in mind that we should not require to go back to the source ever again. So, on one hand, we need to try our best to be brief we should never filter out any unavoidable information.

Thus, there exists a well-defined method along with certain rules that one must follow to optimize their notes and get the best out of them. For example, what to choose as the heading, what and how many subheadings to give etc.

Advantages

• Personalised Convenience: Every individual can make notes according to his/her own understanding of the matter. Which means even if the source of two notes is the same they will be unique because each note-maker is free to personalise their notes in a way he/she finds best.
• Reversible: The same way notes help us to make the information, we can write a descriptive account of this information with the help of the notes as well. So, the decompression of the content is possible.
• Alterable: With time, as we keep on going through the notes, again and again, we can make changes according to our convenience.
• Quick Learning: This point stands in close relation to our first point as we personalise the convenience we make our notes more and more comprehensible. As a result, these notes help us to memorise the source main text more easily and quickly. Because obviously a text better understood is a text better learned!

Strategies to Make a Note

The use of bullet points is something we keep seeing all the time. The basic idea behind this practice is providing a gist about something in a not-easily-forgettable fashion. And the objective of note making is the same; to bring the focus of readers on the most significant information, leaving behind everything else. Now let’s study about the strategies one must follow to make appropriate notes, point by point:

Heading/Subheading

To assign a short and best-understood heading and subheading, we need to go through the source content at least twice.

• For the first time just skim through the whole content to find a central idea or the main outline of the topic.
  This will be our heading which should consist of as few words as possible
• While reading the second time try to be more thorough as this time we are looking for the sub-headings. Which means, you must focus on the subordinate ideas supporting the central theme. The brevity of the sub-heading is still mandatory

Content

Only write the most relevant content for making your notes truly precise. And don’t forget to include those important details that you think you will have a hard time recalling later.

• Ignore all the less important things such as unnecessary illustrations, examples, etc.
• Mention the maximum of information point-wise but do pay attention that the information is complete
• Divide and sub-divide the content in a logical manner and make the notes according to the same sequence
• Never put in your own interpretations. You may write the given conclusions in your own words but don’t add your own opinions

Readability

There are certain tips and trips one can use to avoid any ambiguity and make the notes more catchy.

• Provide headings. sub-headings and sub-sub-headings(if present) with proper numbering; relating anything with numbers always makes it easy to by-heart!
• Don’t leave unnecessary spaces to eliminate any confusion
• Make use of as many abbreviations as possible but it should not come at the expense of poor comprehension

Solved Example for You!

Question: List down few advantages of note making?

Answer:  Here are the few advantages,

1. Personalised Convenience
2. Reversible
3. Alterable
4. Quick Learning
5. Promotes active learning
6. Improves focus and attention to detail