How to Take Notes on Your Readings
Taking efficient notes on your required readings will make revising for exams and writing essays so much easier! I write two sets of notes. The first set are designed to help you to write essays, whereas the second set will help you revise for exams, and recall information quickly in seminars. This might sound like overkill, but hear me out; it will make your life easier in the long run. The first set of notes that I write are taken while reading. These notes are longer, more detailed and include quotes from the author (with the coordinating page numbers to help when you go to write your essays). The second set of notes are taken after you’ve finished reading and pull from the most important parts of your first set of notes. These notes are written in a table format and only include the essential information to help you in your exam preparation and for answering questions in seminars.
Let me break down how I take/organise the first set of notes:
At the top of the page I write down the crucial question/topic that the author is wrestling with/ exploring. I then like to split my notes into sections; thesis, argument and theory, case study, and where it fits in the wider literature.
Section 1 - Thesis:
The first thing that I do is summarise the author’s thesis statement or quote it directly. Their thesis statement will tell you their stance on the broader topic area and spell out what they will be arguing throughout the paper. Having this at the beginning of your notes will allow you to quickly review the main claims made by the scholars and schools of thought that your course is engaging with. You’ll be able to find the authors’ thesis statement in their introductory paragraph. On the rare occasion that they don’t clarify their argument during the introduction, it will be in the conclusion. If you are looking at a book rather than an academic article, look to the third or fourth paragraph of the introduction. More often than not, there will be a paragraph here that starts with something like: "In this book I will argue that...". Some works, like textbooks, don’t have a main argument or thesis, as the goal of these books is to describe and define key terms/events. When you note down quotes or paraphrase the author’s ideas make sure that you include the page number. This will make it easy to quote when writing essays in the future.
Section 2 - Argument:
In this section I note the following things
Main points (they usually will take you through these in their introduction before they go into more the depth in the main body)
What theory is this grounded in? - how do they use theoretical frameworks to justify their argument?
Date/context (Social and disciplinary) - this will help in understanding the author’s perspective, and even why the piece was written in the first place.
Section 3 - Case Study/ evidence:
What example(s) do they use to prove their argument?
Section 4 - where does this work fit in the wider literature?
This section considers what ideas and which thinkers this work is in reaction to or arguing against.
What authors do they specifically challenge?
What ideas/theories do they disagree with?
Does it go against the mainstream thought or is it part of the mainstream thought?
This is how I then lay out my second set of notes, using my first set of notes to fill in the columns:
