People use lots of different methods and systems for note-taking, but one of the most popular is the Cornell system. Created in the fifties by Walter Pauk, an education professor at Cornell, this system is seriously efficient.
Start by preparing your paper for note taking. Some retailers sell Cornell ready notebooks, but that’s really not necessary. Any large loose-leaf page should do the trick. Draw a vertical line on your page (about 2 ½ inches from the left side). To the right of your line, you’ll be physically recording your notes. The left side of the page is called the “recall” column. After the session, you’ll be recording key phrases and terms in the section.
During the actual course of the presentation, use the right side of your page to take your notes. Record your notes in paragraphs, and try to capture general ideas, not the examples used to expand on those ideas. Write neatly, as you’ll need to refer to your notes later. Any abbreviations might be useful, as it will allow you to capture more of the presentation.
After the presentation or lecture, be sure to go back to your recall column. Reread your notes, and reduce them into words, phrases, or brief ideas. Essentially, you want to take that time to reflect and absorb the information.
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This is very similar to the basic note taking technique in a National Forensic League policy debate round. It’s called “flowing”, and since there is only 7 minutes for main speeches, and a speaker must present an entire plan with citations, the speaking is fast like the Micro Machines commercials from back in the day, so accurate note taking is imperative, and challenging.
To my point, I do find the vertical column thing extremely helpful. We were also taught to use two different ink colors to differentiate sections b/c notes not only have to be flowed fast, they have to be very quickly recalled with limited preparation time.
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Another help for notetaking is speedwriting which is a kind of shorthand that speeds up your writing substantially. For the basic level of skill, it can be learned in as little as an afternoon from a book. There are several books available, including “Principles of speedwriting” and “Easyscript.”
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I actually studied shorthand years ago, but never used it much. I took notes pretty much abbreviating any and everything I could. Now, I just take my computer and do a full transcription of the talk. Later, at my leisure, I could just study the notes and condense and distill them to glean the pertinant information. Hate to take notes in longhand anymore.
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Jeanne, love your suggestion. I’m going to have to check into one of those books. I can be slow at notetaking.
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Brad, you can get Principles of Speedwriting by Joe Pullis on Amazon for 36 cents (plus $3.49 shipping) used. I’ve used speedwriting of various kinds for 25 years and it’s a great help. You need not use every trick, but the general principles are incredibly helpful. What makes it better than most kinds of shorthand is that it is just alphabetical, not symbols that you have to memorize. I have notes I took 25 years ago in shorthand and never transcribed them and I can still read them just fine.
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