NOTE TAKING AND SUMMARISING SKILLS

This poting aims to revise and practise note-taking and summarising skills. To take notes and summarise information effectively you will need to be able to:

• recognise main, relevant ideas in a text

• extract these ideas and reduce them to note form

• rewrite your notes in a coherent manner in your own words.

NOTE-TAKING

To write effectively you must be able to make effective notes (both of source material and of your own work). You must be able to recognize main or relevant ideas in a text and be able to reproduce these in note form. Generally speaking, notes from a text are taken for two reasons:

• as a permanent record for later reference

• as relevant or important points to include in your own written work.

Sentences or phrases are copied from the original, often with some deletion of less important material.

In exceptional cases, such copying may be necessary (especially when a large amount of concentrated detail from the original is required or when the original writer has expressed ideas so well that they might be suitable for quotation). However, in general, it is not desirable, firstly because plagiarism must be avoided. It is important when you are extracting ideas from a text that you do not use the words of the original or 'lift' chunks of language verbatim (i.e. copying long sections word for word). This is known as plagiarism. Plagiarism is the use of other writers' words or ideas without proper acknowledgement; in other words, literary theft. You must re-express the ideas in your own words. There is also another important reason for avoiding copying from your source when taking notes. Copying can easily prevent a true understanding of a text, especially if you have some language problems.

You may already be an experienced note-taker in your own language. The next section may still be useful to you, however. It includes several suggestions in the following areas to facilitate note-taking:

1. Selective note-taking

2. Identifying main purposes and functions - global note-taking

3. Identifying main and subsidiary information

4. Using symbols and abbreviations

5. Producing a diagrammatic 'skeleton'

6. Adding to the 'skeleton'

7. Mind maps

8. Note cards.

1. SELECTIVE NOTE-TAKING

It may be that only parts of a text are relevant to your needs and attempting to take notes on all of it will only waste time. In this case, you will have to decide what to edit in and what to edit out by reading through the text and noting down clearly which parts of it you will need to take notes on. If the text is your own property, it is useful to highlight these parts by underlining or using a highlighter pen.

2. IDENTIFYING MAIN PURPOSES AND FUNCTIONS OF A TEXT GLOBAL NOTE TAKING

Whether you require partial information from a text or need to take notes on all of it, identifying its main purposes and functions will be indispensable. Reading the title and introduction of a text should give you an idea of both. As we saw in Unit 1, Task 1, the titles of academic texts are usually informative. In many cases, the purposes and functions of a text may be identical. For example, a text may suggest solutions to a problem, defend reasons for a policy or describe the properties of a material. In other cases, one or several functions may contribute to a purpose; a description and comparison of two methods may serve to show that one of them is

better than the other.

3. IDENTIFYING MAIN AND SUBSIDIARY INFORMATION

When reading the main body of a text you will have to look for indicators of important information that you will want to note down. The easiest type of writing to follow is that in which factual information is presented in a linear form. There is little difficulty in identifying a sequence of events or points or the stages of a process, especially when they have been indicated by markers such as First...Secondly ... Next... Finally ....

In some subject areas the kind of linear presentation described above is very common. However, the majority of texts in many subjects may not have such easily recognizable indicators in presenting information. If there is a lot of discussion, it may be difficult to identify points or distinguish what is more important from what is of secondary importance. Moreover, even if there is a linear form distinguishable in the information, it may be presented in a non-linear way. To take a simple example, it may be possible to distinguish a linearity of time in a text but the sequence of events may not necessarily be mentioned in the order in which they occurred.

A suggested answer to the short task would look like this:

Underwater Cameras

1. Regular Cameras

special housing necessary

2. Amphibious

(a) snapshot models

(b) Nikonos (35 mm system camera)

Lenses:

(i) in air & water - 35 mm 90 mm

(ii) only under water — 28 mm 15 mm

As shown in the example above, when taking notes, it is helpful to employ a system of letters and numerals to distinguish main facts or ideas from subsidiary ones. For example, 1. can be followed by (a), (b), (c) and further sub-divisions may be made using small Roman numerals - (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) etc.

4. USING SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS

A combination of symbols and abbreviations may help in note-taking from written sources. They are indispensable in taking notes from a lecture where speed is essential. It is important to be consistent when using symbols and abbreviations.

Below are some suggestions which are commonly used and which you could incorporate into your own note-taking.

Abbreviations for note-taking generally fall into three categories:

1. Common abbreviations, many of them abbreviated Latin terms. For example:

c.f. {confer) - compare

e.g. {exempli gratia) — for example

etc. {et cetera) — and others, and so on

i.e. {id est) - that is to say, in other words

NB {nota bene) — note well

no. {numero) — number

2. Abbreviations used in a particular field of study. For example:

in chemistry — Au for gold, Mg for magnesium

3. More personal abbreviations, some of which may be words in shortened form that are used fairly commonly. For example:

diff - different

govmt — government

nec — necessary

tho' - although

Notes are made for your own personal use, and, indeed, you may already have developed your own individual style of note-taking. When using abbreviations and symbols, it is important to make sure you will later be able to understand what you

have written and that you can reconstitute the notes if necessary. Effective note taking will enable you to:

• represent important points in brief

• keep a record of important information

• avoid the temptation to plagiarize.

5. PRODUCING A DIAGRAMMATIC 'SKELETON'

You may take notes in a linear form, as in the example on the text about cameras above. However, employing a diagrammatic 'skeleton' to accommodate essential information is useful for two reasons. It can help to clarify your own understanding of the text and it makes it easy to add information later. This may be highly useful when the information that you require is presented in a non-linear form in a text.

The example below is again based on the text about cameras you saw above: the layout should be far easier to follow than a page of dense prose.

6. ADDING TO THE 'SKELETON'

When you have noted down the essential information, you can then add to your 'skeleton' with details that are less important, or even quotations if necessary. It is therefore important to leave enough space for additional information. Your completed notes are then ready to be referred to in your work or used as the basis for a summary (see next section). In principle, a brief summary (e.g. the abstract of an article) will contain information drawn only from the essential 'skeleton', while a more detailed one may include some less important information too. Deciding what is less important, particularly when there is a lot of detail, is not always easy, but remember to consider how much detail your specific needs are likely to require.

7. MIND MAPS

An alternative way of setting down information is to use a 'mind map'. In this case, you write down the central fact or idea in the middle of the page and connect it to other facts or ideas, represented concisely by using 'key words'. A 'key word' is one that is sufficient for you to remember information. If you need detailed information, this technique may be inadequate. However, for the purposes of practising putting ideas into your own words and avoiding plagiarism, its use is highly recommended. (For further ideas on the use of 'mind maps', see Tony

Buzan, Use Your Head, London: BBC Books, 1989.)

8. NOTE CARDS

Note cards can be used to record important or interesting information. When preparing for a specific research project, it is useful to record one point per card, using one side of the card only. You should record the following information:

• a heading

• one point per card

• identification of source, possibly on the reverse of the card

• page or line reference (for inclusion in references or in case you wish to refer

back to the original in the future)

• personal comments on the material.

Information recorded should be in note form and self-sufficient, making it unnecessary later to refer to the source material. In this way you will build a separate, complete and accurate record of important information from source material. When you are writing a paper, it will be easy to select and arrange points in whatever order you wish. Cards can easily be arranged and rearranged to form different sequences and any unwanted cards can be discarded.

There may be occasions when you will wish to record the original wording exactly; for example:

• when the wording of the original is particularly pertinent to an idea you are

discussing and cannot be improved upon

• when you wish to quote a particular source to support a line of argument

• to avoid any ambiguity or misrepresentation of source material.

In these cases it is important that you record the exact phrasing and punctuation of the original. You should also indicate on your note card when you have written a quotation as opposed to using your own words.

SUMMARISING

In your main course of study, you will almost certainly need to summarize information in writing. You may be required to do this as part of the course or it may prove to be a valuable skill when you are assimilating information for your own further use. Summarising will often be the next step after note-taking in integrating material from sources you have read into your own writing. In fact, the practice of writing summaries from your notes is a useful safeguard against the temptation to plagiarise. Summarising is also an excellent way of ascertaining whether you understand and can remember material you have been reading. The amount of detail you include in a summary will vary and you may need to be selective in the information you choose to summarise from your reading material.

However, you will probably need to go through most of the following stages:

1. Quickly read through the text to gain an impression of the information, its content and its relevance to your work; underline/highlight the main points as you read.

2. Re-read the text, making a note of the main points.

3. Put away the original and rewrite your notes in your own words.

4. Begin your summary. Restate the main idea at the beginning of your summary, indicating where your information is from.

5. Mention other major points.

6. Change the order of the points if necessary to make the construction more logical.

7. Re-read the work to check that you have included all the important

information clearly and expressed it as economically as possible.

In a summary you should not include your own opinions or extra information on

the topic which is not in the text you have read. You are summarizing only the writer's information. Also take care not to include details of secondary importance. Summarizing can help you to avoid plagiarism. It is most important that you use your own words in presenting information (unless you are giving a direct quotation). It is better to adopt the practice of taking notes and then writing a summary from your notes without having the original text in front of you. In the academic traditions of the English-speaking world, using another person's words and ideas, without indicating that they are not your own, where they came from and who wrote them, provokes a very negative reaction.

Sources:

Mackay, John T & S.E. (1998). Study Skills For Academic Writing. London: Prentice Hall Internaional English Language Teaching.