Note taking involves summarizing important points from a lecture or presentation for later use. The process includes recording, reducing, reciting, reflecting, and reviewing notes. Note takers should use legible writing, omit common words, include subheadings, and label pages to keep notes organized.
Note taking is when a listener summarizes a lecture, speech, or presentation into the most important points and notes those points for later use. This can help the listener remember what was said so it can be remembered and used more efficiently. Note taking can be important whenever the listener needs to know or remember a significant amount of information that has been told to them by the speaker, because without the use of notes, it can be difficult to remember everything said. Many experts recommend five tips for taking and using notes: record, reduce, recite, reflect, and review.
In note taking, recording is the act of writing down what is being said by the speaker. Rather than the listener compiling a full transcript, however, note-taking involves writing down your main points, the most important information, or anything that is new or might be difficult to remember. These notes could be complete sentences, keywords, or whatever is most useful to the note-taker.
After the speaker has finished speaking, note takers can reduce their notes. This involves going through the notes and deleting or deleting anything that isn’t important or redundant. When he’s taking notes, the listener may not immediately realize what’s important or unimportant. He or she may not even be aware of repetition or redundancy as he or she takes notes. The notetaker can reduce the amount of notes and can rearrange or consolidate the notes into the most useful format.
Afterwards, the note taker can act out and reflect. This involves reading the remaining notes, often aloud, so that note-takers can hear and read them, and think about the information. Note-takers may memorize some or all of the notes and should make sure they understand all the information rather than just being able to repeat it. Anything that is unclear should be clarified, perhaps by contacting the original speaker to clarify an issue or ask questions. Note-takers may also seek answers from other sources, such as books, online materials, other experts, or even other people who have heard the same speaker.
The final step is for the note-taker to review the notes. This is usually done in preparation for using the information in some way, such as before a test or corporate project. Making an overall outline of the notes at this stage can help note-takers keep their thoughts organized and can help ensure that all necessary information is remembered.
Along with the five Rs, are some simple note-taking tips. Using legible writing can ensure that no information is lost. Articles such as “to” and “the” as well as other common words could be omitted during annotation so that information can be written more quickly and to use less space.
It can be helpful to include subheadings that indicate different topics or talking points. The notes should also include the date, a title or general topic and a page number on each page of the notes and should be sure to secure any loose papers together, for example with a paper clip. This can help keep notes from different topics or speakers from getting mixed up or partially lost.
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