hello all! someone asked for tips on taking notes from a textbook so i’ve done my best to put some thoughts together, and it kind of morphed into this. i hope this helps somewhat & feel free to add on anything you think i’ve missed!
create summary sentences! divide your reading by page/paragraph/subheadings/whatever feels right, read the section and then write 1-3 sentences or bullet points about what you’ve just read. make it simple but relevant. also include things you find particularly interesting!
learn to skim. odds are if a teacher/professor assigns three chapters, they don’t want you to read everything word by word. there will be some irrelevant parts. it’s your job to skim those sections as well as decide (based on knowledge from the class and other assignments) what is worth paying attention to and what isn’t.
similarly, if you are assigned 3 readings, one may not be as helpful as the others so you may take little to no notes on that one. that’s completely fine! but i do recommend actually doing as much of the reading as you can
on the other hand though, my political science class has so many different readings per class that i only end up doing about half of them simply because i don’t have the time. if you choose do do this, i’d recommend looking into all of the readings and only completing the ones that you feel will help you the most. that may mean doing the longest one because it has a big overview of everything, or it may mean only doing the one focused on economic factors because you didn’t understand that part of the lecture very well.
keep track of key words and definitions- this can be really helpful if you’re supposed to be learning broad concepts or trends but don’t let them bog you down. i find that using them in reference to something else makes it easier for me to learn and remember them, rather than spending hours copying definitions.
btw i also used the summary sentence method in high school when i was doing the ib diploma, but have since refined it a lot. i’ve definitely improved on deciding what i need to know and learn, so my biggest piece of advice is to be patient and trust your gut.
i’ve decided to make this a separate part because i use both of these methods for some classes, but i never do both for the same text– that is just too much.
typically (using my political science and anthropology classes as an example) if i have a physical copy of the reading (printed or my own copy of the book) i will just highlight and annotate. the key here is annotating in addition to highlighting. in these assignments i highlight pieces that would be useful in essays as well as pieces that explain concepts very briefly.
in the margins i will then write small notes about the paragraph (like summary sentences but even simpler)
i will also write down any questions that i think of, whether they are relevant or not.
if the text is online, then i will do what i outlined above in summary sentences.
all of that being said, this is what works best for me. also, i don’t have any textbooks for any of my current classes so all of the above info may not be helpful at all. i’ll definitely update this or make a new post specifically about textbooks in the future when i have more experience with them but for now i’m also going to include what a friend of mine does.
skims the textbook chapter and highlights main points, she does this very, very quickly
meets up with a friend to do the assigned homework as well as go over basic points of the reading
returns to the textbook and reads it more thoroughly
this is definitely a lot of work, but depending on how your class typically runs and how you learn best it may be worth trying.
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