Note Taking

Please read the Cornell Note Taking Document.

Answer the following questions in paragraph form:

• 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 English Language and Composition, have been taking notes up until now?
• Is what I've been doing effective?
• Is there anything I would do differently?

  The act of taking notes helps us, the student and learner, by providing for us an opportunity to review the information we learned and to further organize, analyze, understand, and interpret the information. When we go back and review the notes that we have taken, we once again implant the information into our minds, creating a strong impression and a more long-lasting memory that will follow us. The best way to make taking notes work is to create a system that is best for you or a system that you are most comfortable with. The system must allow you to understand what you are writing and why you are writing it in a specific way or place. For example, in the Cornell system for note taking, different areas are separated for different review purposes: the note taking area, the key word or idea column, and the summary area. This system is effective because it forces the note taker to review the lecture in more depth and makes sure that the note taking understands the material in a general sense.
  I do not use the Cornell system to take notes. Instead, when I take notes, I create a first draft that is usually constructed of bullet points and is very simple and concise in wording. Many of the sentences in this first draft are just ideas, and usually includes a lot of abbreviations. Then, I would recreate the notes, usually an electronic document, into a more organized fashion that can be understood by all people. After this, I would then print out the document so that I can review it again, and maybe take any last minute notes that spring up. However, this is a little bit different from the way I take notes for AP English Language and Composition. Before I start writing or typing down the notes, I would read through the material first and highlight the important and main ideas. Then I would type it and organize so that it is in a clearer fashion. This is effective for me because the notes that I take for AP English are usually different types of rhetoric technique that can be separated into different levels, and organizing them the way I do makes them more readable and understandable. I believe that my way of note taking has served me well enough, and I don't believe that I would change much. One of the things that I might include may be the key word or idea column in the Cornell System of note taking.