Making study notes as you revise

Creating study notes, as you revise, can be helpful for a number of reasons:

• to highlight important information
• to focus the mind as you read
• to have something to scan before your exam
• to allow someone else to test you

Here are a couple of approaches to note-taking:

(1) Create flash cards

If you don't have cards, just cut a piece of paper up into six equal pieces (like power point slides).  Use your flash cards to record important definitions, key points and lists.

Remember, flash cards don't need to include ALL of the information in your text book.  Use keywords that will trigger the information that you need to remember.

You can type or handwrite your cards - handwriting has the benefit of allowing you to add illustrations, to highlight points, to write in different colour pens - anything that helps you to remember!

(2) Using the Cornell note-taking method

The Cornell system involves creating a wide margin on the left-hand side of the page, and using it to annotate the notes you are taking on the right-hand side.  It allows you to quickly find definitions, examples etc within your detailed notes.  To learn more, have a look at this short tutorial.