How to Make Good Study-notes
Making good study-notes plays a vital role in preparation for exams. A student starts his preparation for an exam from the first day of his academic session by taking classes and studying books daily. Having good study-notes helps you in learning your lessons easily. Apart from learning from study-notes in a normal routine. the study-notes are extremely important for making preparation for your exam. Students have less time for preparation for each paper during the exam. Study-notes helps you prepare for your next paper in a very less time as it contains all the important points for learning for the paper.
Study notes are made on daily basis from lectures in class and from reading helpful books. Being a student you should know how to make good study notes which may help you in getting high marks in your exam. This article will definitely help you in this regard. The characteristics of good study-notes are as follows:
1. Characteristics of Good Study Notes
1. Easy to understand and learn
2. It saves you time
3. It contains the important ideas of class-lecture and book
4. It has data for preparation for the exam in a proper sequence
5. It has collective extracts from many books - you don't need to read many books
6. It tells you how to present your answer in the exam
7. Being made by you. you feel confident about it and acquainted with it
8. It can be easily revised again and again
2. Preparing Good Study-notes
Study-notes are created by students in two ways. First, the ideas may be collected and then a proper shape is given to these ideas to make final notes. Ideas from the lecture, while it is delivered by the teacher as well as ideas from written material (books e.t.c), are collected to make study notes. Collecting ideas and giving proper shape to them for making notes is explained as below:
Collecting Notes During Class-Lecture
1. Have a sheet (paper) and a pen while sitting in a classroom for writing down the important ideas shared by your teacher.
2. Be attentive while listening to the lecture.
3. Teachers are experts on the subject. They present the ideas in such a sequence in their lecture so that students can learn them properly. Write these ideas properly and in sequence as lectured by your teacher.
4. The teacher may share such information that may not be mentioned in your course books, note them down; they are very helpful. They give you helpful information in addition to what is in the book.
5. Write down all the jargon. terminologies. important definitions which are shared by your teacher during the lecture.
3. Preparing Study Notes from helpful Books
1. Apart from the class-lectures, course books and guide-books are major sources of learning. Similarly, the Internet also serves as a huge source of learning nowadays.
2. When you study a book, guide, or even from a source on the internet, pay you concentration to learn it as your first aim is to learn it and at the same time write down the important ideas you learn from it on a separate sheet to make the study-notes.
3. You may study many books, guides, or sources from the Internet for understanding the same topic. In such a case, you note important points from each source to make your study-notes. Such notes are extremely helpful as you don't need to study all those sources again. Points, collected from different sources about the same topic, maybe given a comprehensive shape for making them your study-notes.
4. Writing down the particular terminologies, definitions, the step-wise explanation is an important part of making your study notes.
5. Writing your notes you should consider all this information which will help you remind its all-important explanation which you will need for preparation for the exam.
6. An explanation in the book about a topic may be very long, try to understand it and then write only the important things leaving the unnecessary details. Don't skip important data, your notes should have all the data which you need for preparation for your exam.
7. Some information given in the books may be in a different order to that you need to present in your exam so collect your data in proper order for making your notes.
4. Giving Proper Shape To the Collected Notes
The ideas were collected for making study notes. while listening to a lecture in a classroom or from a studying book, may not be in proper shape when you first note it down on a paper. The reason is, that during studying a book or listening to class-lecture, you are primarily focused on learning the topic. Hence. all the points collected during the classroom or studying a book should be given a proper shape.
Students can write their study notes in form of paragraphs having heading. individual points or with help of using table and diagrams but do remember the following tips for giving proper shape to collected ideas for making good study notes
1. Write headings. topics and sub-topics for long paragraphs - use a marker for this
2. Write your data in proper order
3. Do make a proper table and diagram which gives help about the topic
4. Don't include unnecessary ideas in your notes
5. Write your notes according to the nature of the question asked in the exam e.g paragraphs for explanatory answers and individual points for MCQs
6. If you have to make all the notes by writing them in your own handwriting then try to write your note clearly to make them easily readable in future
7. Do write with the data the reference of book or website or lecture you have collected from
5. Saving your study-notes in a proper way
1. It is better to write your study-notes in a note-book or a register. whose pages may not easily be detached or removed.
2. If you are using loose-pages for your making study-notes, you should have a folder for saving the pages. In such a case. you should also write the page number on each page. so that pages may not be mixed in the wrong order.
3. Write the name of the subject on your note-book or folder having the study-notes. Keep your study-notes in a cupboard or other safe place to save them for later use as you will have to use them many times. Nowadays. most of the students write and save their study-notes on the computer. In such a case students should make a separate folder so that it may not get deleted by mistake.
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