Note Taking

• Why take notes at all?
• What is the best way to make taking notes work?  Why is it effective?
• Do I take notes in this way?
• How have I, as a student in AP Language and Composition, have been taking notes up until now?
• Is what I’ve been doing effective?
• Is there anything I would do differently?

Notes are essential to understanding the information during a lecture. Listening to the lecture is not enough you have to take notes to have a more personal understanding of the information. The reason to take notes is because it helps you recall the information learned in class and allows you to narrow the information down to the main points.
The best way to make taking notes work, is to be sure that it is concise yet still able of stating the most important information fully. Make up abbreviation that you can understand clearly so that you don't spend more time than you actually need on writing down every word. Also paraphrase and make the information your own to help you remember and understand the notes better. Only use word for word if the quote is important or the way that the information was presented had a certain significance.
I take notes quite efficiently, jotting down only the main/most important points and making sure that i don'y spend too much time taking down notes as the teacher moves on to the next point. However when compared to the Cornell note taking method, my own lacks quite a few things. All i have are the main points that i thought were important and a few key words here and there. It not extremely organized either, no separate column for different purposes i just start from the top and continue downwards. In APELC i do not take as much notes as i would in other classes because a lot of the things are critical thinking based and i find taking down notes for things like that are un-necessary. I type up a few things that i think are important that gets brought up in class but other than that i rarely have my computer out for taking notes, more for checking facts. However at home while doing the assigned readings i do take notes and i have a system of formatting that allows me to see immediately what is more important. I keep it concise and try to follow a 10 pages for one page of notes format. That allows me to be concise with my notes and make sure that i don't include un-necessary information. I do a lot of my notes on the computer and sometimes it can be hard to access. So i think from now on i'll do the main notes on the computer and make a even more concise version on paper. However i do not think i will be using the Cornell note taking system because i would get too lazy to go back and do the summary and cues, which would make it a waste of time trying to organize everything before hand. I do summaries and cues on my own when i go back to review the information though, just not as soon as possible.