Anyone know any good note taking strategies? I'm doing a lot of reading in uni and just trying to pull out the important information isn't really working.
A bit more information on your note-taking difficulties would be helpful.
Anyway, one thing you can try is summarizing the main ideas by paragraph as you read along. Once you've finished that for the section, run through the text again before you go back and summarize the summaries. Eventually, you'll wind up with the most basic ideas of that section as a whole. Then, go back through the text again and add sub-points to the main ideas until you wind up with an outline of the reading.
Doing so will not only net you a nice study guide, but you'll have read the text multiple times and so will be more likely to remember the details of its contents.
For my Linguistics textbooks, they give a lot of examples and not too many terms. For my Archaeology textbook they give more examples than terms and all of my Women's History texts are primary sources.
What common threads do the excerpts share? Why have they been compiled together and in such a way? Note.
Those are your main ideas. Once you have them down, you can go back and add some explanation/details about the examples.
Another option would be to go by example/excerpt, following the steps I outlined earlier.
Also, remember that terms are not as important as understanding the basic concepts, themes, or ideas that lie behind the terms. Focus on learning the concepts behind the terms rather than just the terms themselves.
What works for me is exploring the basic concepts through thought applied examples (that I create) and cross-referencing stuff they're discussing with things I already know. I'll also start actively remembering everything that connects to what I'm learning about to better remember it.
But, that being said, I tend to need a lot of examples to remember everything. The more reference points I mentally make, the better I remember things.
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo
Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
Well, I doubt I'll help as I'm 13, but learning seems to based on focus. Be interested in it, and want to learn it. Visualize in your head(regardless how arbitrary of a thought). Associate it with things, and be broad, don't strain to remember specifics. Also, get the main idea first, just read through and skim like you don't care, then read it again. Maybe write down the main idea, but I wouldn't know, I've never studied in my life(but I have, don't mean to be conceited, a "natural talent", both my brothers, too).
If you must remember the specifics, don't remember "thoughts(audio)", remember pictures or something more physical, like the page in the book or your notes.
--Doubt I helped.
By nature, all language is flawed.
"Peace cannot be kept by force, it can only be achieved by understanding," - Albert Einstein
No, it's not that you didn't succeed. You accomplished a lot, but, if you want to touch people, don't concentrate so much on rhyme and metre. Think more about what you want to say instead of how you're saying it. — LCDR Geordi La Forge
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