How to make Good Study Notes – A Complete Guide

Having a successful study-notes plays a crucial role in the planning of the test. The student begins his exam training on the first day of his academic session by attending lessons and preparing books on a regular basis. Getting a good study-notes lets you learn your lessons quickly. Apart from studying from research notes in the regular routine, the study notes are highly important for the planning of your test. Students have less time to study for each paper during the test. Study-notes will help you prepare for the next paper in a much shorter period as it includes all the key points for paper learning.
Study notes are taken on a regular basis from lectures in the classroom and from reading valuable books. Being a student, you should know how to make good research notes that will help you get high marks in your test. This article is certainly going to support you in this respect. The features of a good analysis are as follows:
1. Strong Research Notes Characteristics
- Simple to understand and to learn
- It’s saving your time
- It includes the most important ideas of class-lecture and text.
- It has data for preparation for exam in a proper sequence
- It has collective extracts from many books – you don’t need read many books
- It tells you how to present your answer in exam
- Being made by you, you feel confident about it and acquainted with it
- It can be easily revised again and again
2. Preparing Good Study-notes
Study-notes are created by student in two ways. First the ideas may be collected and then a proper shape is given to these idea to make final notes. Ideas from lecture while it is delivered by teacher as well as ideas from written material (books e.t.c) are collected to make study notes. Collecting ideas and giving proper shape to them for making notes is explained as below:
3. Collecting Notes During Class-Lecture
- Have a sheet (paper) and a pen while sitting in classroom for writing down the important ideas shared by your teacher.
- Be attentive while listening to the lecture.
- Teachers are expert of the subject. They present the ideas in such a sequence in their lecture so that student can learn it properly. Write these thoughts correctly and in order as lectured by your prof.
- Teachers may share such details that your course books may not be listed, please remember them; they are very helpful. They send you useful information in addition to what is in book.
- Write down all the jargons, terminologies, essential meanings which are shared by your instructor during the lecture.
4. Preparing Research Notes from useful Books
- Apart from the class-lectures, course books and guide-books are significant sources of instruction. Likewise, the Internet is still a major centre of information today.
- When you read a book, a guide, or even a source on the Internet, pay your attention to understanding it as your first objective is to understand it and, at the same time, write down the useful ideas you learn from it on a separate study-notes sheet.
- You will want to review a lot of books, guides or online sources to understand the same topic. In that case, you can find crucial points from each source to make your study notes. These notes are incredibly useful, since you don’t need to research all these references again. Points, gathered from various sources on the same subject, can have a detailed form to make them your study notes.
- Writing down basic terms, meanings, step-by-step examples is a vital aspect of making your research notes.
- Writing your notes should consider all this knowledge that will allow you to recall all the relevant explanations you need to study for the test.
- The description in the book on the subject can be very lengthy, try to comprehend it, and then write only the relevant points, leaving the irrelevant details. Don’t miss crucial details, your notes should contain all the data you need to plan for your test.
- Any of the information provided in the books could be different from what you need to address in your exam so that you can compile the details in order to make your notes.
5. Giving proper form to the notes collected
The ideas gathered for making research notes, when listening to a lecture in the classroom or reviewing a book, might not be in the right form when you first write it down on a page. The explanation is that when you study a book or listen to a class-lecture, you are mainly focused on studying the subject. Therefore, all points obtained during the classroom or the study of a book should be given a proper form.
Students may write their study notes in the form of heading paragraphs, individual points or with the aid of tables and diagrams, but remember the following tips for giving proper shape to the ideas gathered for making good study notes.
- Write headings, subjects and sub-topics for long paragraphs – use a label for this
- Write the data in the right order
- Make the correct table and diagram to assist with the subject
- Don’t have any unnecessary suggestions in your notes
- Write the comments on the essence of the question posed in the test, e.g. paragraphs for explanatory responses and individual points for MCQs.
- If you have to compose all the notes in your own handwriting, consider writing your note simply to make it easier to read in the future.
- Write a guide book or website or a lecture from which you have gathered the details.
6. Saving your study-notes in the right way
- It is best to compose your research notes in a diary or a register whose pages can not be quickly detached or erased.
- If you are using loose pages for your study notes, you should have a folder for saving the pages. You should also write page number on each page in such a situation, so that the pages will not be mixed in the wrong order.
- Write the name of the subject in your notebook or study-note folder. Hold your research notes in a cupboard or other safe place to be stored for later use, as you would have to use them several times. Nowadays, most students compose and store their research notes on a computer. In such a case, students can make a different folder so that it cannot be erased by accident.