Strategies for Success: Taking Notes at the University Level

Why take notes?

Many students find that taking notes is very useful. It helps them to concentrate and pay attention during
a lecture or while they are reading a passage. Taking notes can also help students remember the main
idea and details of a lecture or reading passage, and later on they can review their notes when they are
studying.

On the other hand, some students find that taking notes is distracting. They might miss parts of a lecture
or take a long time to read a passage if they are taking notes at the same time.

Only you can decide if taking notes will be useful for you. Keep reading to learn about strategies for note-
taking. There is also an opportunity to practice taking notes so that you can find out what works for you.

Note-Taking Strategies
Content: What Information to Include

• Don’t try to write down everything you hear or read, since not all of it will be important. Instead,
write down key information such as main ideas, along with supporting details and examples.
• Try to write down information in your own words. This will help you make sure you understand
the concepts and information you are writing down.
• When you are listening to a lecture, if you miss a point and aren’t able to write it down, don’t
panic! Continue listening and taking notes, instead of trying to remember the point you missed.
This way, you won’t miss even more information.
• Listen and look for hints or clues that the professor is communicating an important point.
Professors might change their tone of voice to emphasize certain information, repeat a term or
concept multiple times, or write important information on the board. Also, listen for signal phrases
such as:
o “First of all…”
o “Another point I want to discuss is…”
o “It’s important to remember that….”
• Other things to listen for that are often important:
o Explanations of terms or concepts
o Lists of examples or reasons
o Explanations of relationships between ideas
Organization: How to Structure Your Notes

• Try writing your notes in the form of an outline. You can use numbers and bullet points to keep
your notes organized. You can also use the space on the page creatively by indenting some
information or writing certain information in the center of the page (instead of on the left side).
• Try using headings or titles to label different parts of your notes. This will make it easy for you to
find information later on.
• Some students prefer to use the Cornell Method instead of using an outline. Try this out and see if
it works for you.
• Leave extra blank space in your notes in case you forgot to write something or you decide to add
more information later.
• Try out different ways of emphasizing important information, such as underlining, highlighting, or
circling important information. You can also use arrows to connect pieces of your notes or show
how information is related.
• There is not one single way of organizing notes that works best for everyone. Try these different
strategies and see which ones you prefer—or maybe you have another way of organizing your
notes that works well for you.

Tips, Tricks, & Shortcuts

• Write down words and phrases instead of writing down full sentences. Writing full sentences takes
a lot more time, which could cause you to fall behind and miss important information.
• Focus more on writing down key terms and concepts, and less on writing down function words
such as articles, prepositions, and pronouns (like “the”, “in”, and “she”).
• Use abbreviations to save yourself time. For example:
o + (or &) = “and”
o @ = “at”
o w/ = “with”
o w/o = “without”
o b/c = “because”
o ∴ = “therefore”
• Your notes don’t have to be perfect! Don’t worry too much about spelling or grammar, as long as
you can understand what you’ve written. If you need to write something down in a language
other than English, that’s fine!

How can I practice?

This course contains multiple informational videos in which the instructors share information about the
TOEFL® Test. These videos are a good place to start if you’re looking for some material to take notes on.
Watch some of the different videos and try out some of the strategies above. Before you start to watch a
video and take notes, decide which strategies you’re going to try out. Don’t try to use all the strategies at
once—that could be very overwhelming!
When you take the practice tests found in weeks 2 through 5 of this course, try taking notes and see how
it feels. You might decide that taking notes will be helpful for you on test day, or you might decide that it
would be distracting. Find what works best for you, and stick with it when you take the TOEFL Test!

Sources:

Academic skills: Methods of taking notes [PDF document]. Retrieved from

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~acskills/docs/notetaking.pdf

Effective listening and notetaking [PDF document]. Retrieved from

https://www.northshore.edu/support_center/pdf/listen_notes.pdf

Learning from lectures: A guide to university learning [PDF document]. Retrieved from University of
Guelph:
http://www.learningcommons.uoguelph.ca/guides/university_learning/accessibility/university_learning_gui
de_l ectures.pdf

Listen actively and take great notes. Retrieved from https://mcgraw.princeton.edu/take-great-notes

Pauk, W. (2001). How to study in college (7th ed.). New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Siegel, J. (2016). A pedagogic cycle for EFL note-taking. ELT J, 70(3), 275-286. doi: 10.1093/elt/ccv073

Taking lecture notes [PDF document]. Retrieved from

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~acskills/takinglecturenotes.pdf

The Cornell note-taking system. Retrieved from http://lsc.cornell.edu/study-skills/cornell-note-taking-

system/

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