Blog Study How to Organise Your Study Notes and Keep on Top of Them

How to Organise Your Study Notes and Keep on Top of Them

study notes

So you’ve been writing study notes for a while when you suddenly realise that maybe they’re not quite as quality as you thought they were.

Your maths notes are mixed in with your Othello study, and somehow there’s a drawing of Ho Chi Minh on your poster of Chemistry formulas.

灾难,对吗?

Well, no.

While all study notes can be useful, realising that your notes aren’t quite up to the standards you’d hoped is a really good motivator to clean them up and stay on top!

By following these simple steps you can easily turn a mess of information, or even just average study notes, into super study tools.

Step 1: Take an Inventory
Step 2: Plan Your Cycles
Step 3: Study Your Notes
Step 4: Rewrite

Step 1: Take an Inventory

First things first you’ll have tocollect all the study notes you have so far and take inventory.It’s easiest to do thissubject by subject.

For example, go through all your Modern History notes with the syllabus handy and figure out which syllabus points you have covered and which ones you’ve missed, are lacking in detail, or just don’t make sense.

This gives you aneasy list of things to go over in the future.

A basic inventory checklist could look something like this:
  1. Print out your subjectsyllabus – if it’s one of those 23 page syllabus just print the contents page for a general overview of what topics you should know.
  2. Tick off each syllabus point you have coveredin your notes and highlight ones you haven’t covered or only have minimal information for.
  3. Go over the study notes that you do haveand apply the 5 second rule– look for 5 seconds, then cover them and see if you can remember the key points. Put an asterisk next to any syllabus points where you can’t quite remember the key themes in your notes.
  4. Count up and make a new list of the syllabus points you need to cover– this will help you figure out how much time you’ll need to work on them.

Go and print off your syllabus now!

This is also a good time tofigure out what is and isn’t working about your study notes.

Maybe you’re only incorporating one or two study styles and need to add some new study skills, or perhaps you’ve been slacking off on colour coding.

By addressing these issues you can make your study much more effective and keep your study notes interesting.

The study notes below are an example of the ‘text wall’ and while there’s a lot of content there, it’s pretty hard to digest (not to mention kinda boring!). These are the kind of things you want to monitor while taking inventory.

study notes

打破this information into a mind map will make it much easier to understand and interpret key themes quickly, as well as way more appealing to look at!

study notes

在这种情况下,您将使用思维映射以及原始票据 - 一个用于关键想法的快速外观记忆慢跑,另一个用于额外信息和详细信息。

您有效地添加到您的学习中,并入另一个研究风格,并在其中缩小了您的笔记!这只是您可以计划重新组织或重新格式化您的笔记以改善您的学习的方式之一。

Give it a try:抓住你最好的学习说明和你已经印刷的教学大纲,然后开始标记你拥有的课程表指数,并且到目前为止还没有覆盖。

Step 2: Plan Your Cycles

规划你接下来的步骤可能是艰难的。在某些情况下,您需要做的就是写一些很好的重组笔记的摘要,然后通过更有效的研究风格转向新内容。

In other cases you may need to start from scratch and rewrite your notes altogether, but this usually only happens in worst-case scenarios!

It’s also important totake into account how much time summaries/rewriting will take in comparison to how much time you actually have.

This is also a good time to look at a calendar of upcoming exams and assignments to figure out what notes you’ll need ASAP and which ones might be able to wait a little longer for reorganisation.

再计划一个时间表或周期通常是喜神贝斯t way to organise. Weekly summaries are a good place to start, but some people prefer fortnightly or topic-by-topic notes.

Protip:leave a spare weekend here and there, just in case you miss a set of notes somewhere along the line.

A really common question is whether or not to borrow study notes from friends.

On the one hand they can be really useful and help speed up the note-taking process, but there also seem to be a lot of things that can go wrong with borrowing.

Here are some pros and cons:
Pros Cons
Notes are already formatted May be formatted poorly or in a way you don't understand
Easier to read/interpret than textbooks May be lacking in detail or specifics
可能会有额外的来源的信息吗 Often doesn't list extra sources used
Good for a quick fix if you're running out of time Not always reliable, may have incorrect information
You can cross-reference with your own notes to make sure it all adds up

I won’t say to definitely not borrow study notes from friends, and when you’re coming close to a deadline and have none of your own they can be lifesavers, but do be careful about when and how you use them.

Borrowing notes is great to help you figure out how to set your notes out, catch up on bigger topics or information you missed and cross-referencing, but try not to rely on them. Your friend’s study notes aren’t always right or right for you!

Speeding Up Note Taking

That being said, a lot of the time the urge to borrow study notes stems from a lack of time. When it comes to catching up on notes quickly,有几个黑客加快您的笔记写作but stay effective.

Share the load

If a few of your friends are behind on study notes as well (or haven’t started) you can work together to cover the content quickly.

Figure out which syllabus points need to be covered and split them between the people involved (usually works best with groups of 3-4) to write notes on.

By using a shared platform such as google docs you can work collaboratively to cover the content and keep each other up to standard, pointing out any areas that might not be working as well as others or could be lacking in information.

获取录音

Almost everyone talks faster than they write or type, so recording your notes rather than writing them can quickly cut down on time.

By going through your textbooks or class work and highlighting relevant information, then recording yourself reading it aloud you can get your study compiled in half the time.

Plus, you’re less likely to plagiarise anything if you’re reading it back in your own words.

Cut it down

当您截止到截止日期或考试时,加快注意事项的最快方式是减少您需要写的金额。

Figure out what syllabus points are being covered in the exam and what their weighting is, then prioritise your notes based on that and what notes you already have.

For example; if you have notes (even if they’re kinda lame) on syllabus point 1, drop that to the bottom of your note priorities list; ignore any syllabus points not on the exam for now.

Slang it up

Sometimes none of the other methods work and you just have to buckle down and write a ton of notes.

In these cases the best way to speed things up is to drop the technical language and use slang and text talk like it’s going out of style.

Use shortcuts like “bc” (because), “w/” (with), “w/o” (without), “+” (and), etc. to cut sentences down as much as you can to make notes taking just that little bit quicker.

Give it a try:抓住您最近的音符的页面,并尝试其中的这些技术之一 - 以一种新的方式重写它们,甚至使用新方法来冷凝他们!

Step 3: Study Your Notes

By now you probably know how to read over your study notes, but studying isn’t just about reading and writing! Try some of these techniques to incorporate different study styles and learn more effectively.

Quizzing– give your notes to a friend and ask them to quiz you, giving as much detail in your answers as you can to see how much you recall.

Flash cards– write a question on one side and an answer on the other for quick quizzing. These are great for social study but can also be used to test yourself when you’re alone!

Teach someone- 尝试向您的学习的主要概念或主题教授一无所知的人。确保他们有你的笔记,这样他们就可以指出你错过的任何东西。

Recordings– record yourself reading your notes so that you can play it back whenever you need. Putting these recordings on your phone means you can study on the go.

There’s more information and techniques for different study styles inthis article!

Step 4 (Optional): Rewrites

Study notes are only as effective as you make them, so one of the best things to do is constantly re-evaluate them!

A smart idea is to go back to your study notes after an exam and have a look at how they stack up against your marks and feelings about the test.

Example


“1924年的Dawes计划看到德国支付的赔偿金额显着减少,以及法国军队最终从他们占领了一段时​​间的鲁尔地区。这给德国时间关注她的经济增长,因为美国贷款进来,然而这使得这使得德国经济依赖于美国。“

Now let’s have a look at the summarised version.

总结


“Dawes Plan, 1924: reparations reduced, French move out of occupied Ruhr. US loans make German economy reliant on USA.”

If you found you knew concept A really well, condense your notes on that to make them as succinct as possible for easy recall.

On the other hand, if concept B had you struggling in the exam, go back and expand upon the notes you’ve already written so that you’ll be better prepared next time.

这样你就会不断裁缝你自己的学习需求!

Give it a try:Take a paragraph from your notes and try to condense it into one or two perfect sentences. Post your original paragraph and your summarised sentences in the comments!

All these steps are great for turning lame notes into amazing ones, but they also work for when you just want to reorganise your study notes or try something new!

By taking inventory and working from there you can incorporate new study styles and take your study notes to the next level.

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Maddison Leach2014年完成了HSC,在她的所有科目中实现了98.00的ATAR和6座。在加入聪明的艺术之前私下互动两年,她喜欢通过学校生活的学术和其他方面来帮助学生,尽管它有时会让她感觉到旧。beplay体育官方自青少年早期以来,Maddison已经对写作充满热情,在加入博客世界之前,有几个短篇小说。她目前正在研究悉尼理工大学的设计学士学位,大部分时间都花费尽量不要抓住火车上的人。

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