Monthly Archives: February 2006

“Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.” Sir Francis Bacon.
A general rule for all note-taking, whether lectures or readings: Listen or read and think. Decide what’s important to you, and summarize it in complete sentences.
Explanation
Learning is an active process. The only way you learn is by processing the material in question through your own mind, and integrating it with what you know already. That’s what you’re doing when you read or listen and summarize.
Reading or lecture notes that consist of words, phrases and incomplete sentences are limited in their usefulness, because they’re open to interpretation. When you return to them in a month or three months, you will have trouble understanding them, because you won’t remember which interpretation you were placing on them when you wrote them.
Underlining or highlighting text in your readings is useful only if you already have an understanding of the material being covered. In that case, it can remind you where the key points are for the next time you use the text.
Conclusion: The way to learn, and the way to remember are the same: Think, summarize what’s important to you and write it down in complete sentences.

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