todays workshop is called taking better lecture notes in just a quick uh... word

about the one next week it's called how to predict test questions

this is the first one of five workshops in a row i think it is that all have

that

terrible "T" word in it which is test or tests

so it's kind of a long series in how to become a great test taker which always

helps so that's uh... what's coming up next week

now i wanted to ask everybody a question before we start and uh... again

participation is welcome in these workshops

we're talking about taking notes while teachers are lecturing today so my

question is

kind of a simple one but i don't know if you've ever thought of this

why is it important or helpful for you to take notes

while a teacher is talking

what's the whole point of even doing that

to remember

yeah uh... one of the things that is the simplist way i can describe it is

you wanna take notes so that you don't have to rely on your memory

later on

you could be a fantastic listener and you can concentrate really well on the

teacher but unless you have an amazing ability to remember that

two or three or four weeks later when you're studying for a test on that

material

uh... it's almost impossible to remember what a teacher said

that's why you want to rely on your notes and if your notes are good and

they're complete and you can

study a lot from them

you should do better as a result

uh... the class that i teach

which is learn eleven a study skills course

my students are required on every test among other things

to do a

short writing probably less than a page where they describe in detail

something that i've taught them in class kind of like their teaching it back to

me

and very often amazingly often especially early in the semester

i get a student who writes as their answer

i don't remember

and how many points do they get for that

uh...

the big zero right and so what they're basically saying is

i was there that day it's like three weeks ago i remember

what you were talking about even remember what you were wearing

but i can't quite remember what you said and they're trying to actually go back

and remember

that's dangerous

so that's why you write it in your notes so that you can go over it and over it and

when the test comes it's still fresh in your mind that's the goal okay

so uh... as i mentioned a few minutes ago i'm gonna give you a handout that

uh... is sort of a a outline of what i'm gonna talk about hopefully i'll be able

to get all the way through this

today there's always a lot that i would love to share

never enough time so

i'll just go ahead and sort of give you a

but you can kind of pass that back

if there are extras back there you can just hold on to them and i'll get 'em at

the end and actually let me put some here

case people show up late

okay so in order to take better lecture notes uh... there are seven things

listed here uh... couple of little sub points so this will hopefully be easy for

you to follow uh...

people who are really good note takers

and there aren't that many of them actually because that's a skill uh...

end up doing almost all or all of these things regularly it's just a habit people

who are not good note takers

don't do any of these or maybe they just do one so if you can learn to do them

you'll be better at note-taking than most people

the first one on the list

has nothing to do with taking notes in class

it just has to do with preparing for lectures

there are two suggestions there

and i don't know if anybody here does

these already or not but

they're actually very simple but very hopeful when the

uh... lecture starts

the first one of these so this is the little sub point under number one

is to review the notes

and what notes are we talking about here

with

right the previous notes from the last time you were in class

most teachers when they lecture when that's their main way of teaching

when they come into the classroom they put everything down they might take role

and then usually they don't review alot they just sort of

hit the ground running right where they left off the time before

if it's been five days if it's been a week since you were in there last time

it's really hard to remember what the teacher was talking about at the end of

class and as a result

it's there's hard to focus at the beginning so if you were to spend five

to ten minutes

before class

right before

or earlier that morning or even the night before just kind of remembering

that it helps and then the other one that's part of that is uh...

previewing the textbook

and so if you have a teacher

who lectures basically from

the textbook

so every time you go there's a chapter covered for you to spend fifteen minutes

before you go to class

and become familiar with the main terms the

summary

all of that

it helps you when the teacher talks to start following them right from the

beginning kind of warming up your brain and so these again

might take a total of twenty or thirty minutes to do number one

but it actually helps alot when the lecture begins

so this is a very basic one

and uh... there's a lot more that i can say about that but i'm gonna go ahead

and move on

the second one

on the list is something that i always explain to my

students early in this semester very early

and that is when in doubt write it down that's my rule for note-taking

um...

are you able to write down everything the teacher says

no unless you are the fastest writer ever so that means all the time while

you're listening to the teacher you have to make choices

should i write that

do i not need to write that and sometimes it's really hard to tell

whether you should write something or not is that important or not

some teachers are really good about telling you

this is really important write it down that's nice

but most teachers don't do that they just talk and so one of the reasons that

you want to do these things

is so that when you get the class

and you listen to the teacher

you already have an idea of what's important in the book or what was made

important last time and then you can make good choices

but the other part of this is

uh... if you're ever in a class and the teachers talking fast and you're trying

to write things down and you're trying to decide

if you get to a point where they're saying something and you hesitated you

think

should i write that or not

what's the best thing to do

write it down

ok uh... it's much better to make a mistake on the side of writing too much

in your notes

rather than not enough and often times in my class i see

students

looking at me

and paying attention to me

and so that's nice to see

but then i make several points in a row

and i look and they just

are sitting there

just like it's a conversation and they're listening to me but they're not writing

any of it down

and that makes me always very nervous because there may be a test

two weeks or three weeks later

and i know that most of them are'nt going to remember anything of what i said

if you write it down and as as i said before you get to go back and review it

later so if you're ever wondering

it's like fifty-fifty should i write that or not go ahead and write it if you're

pretty much sure it's not important go ahead and skip it

but it's better write too much than not at all

okay so that's very simple principle number two

okay now for these next couple gonna slow down a little take a little more

time number three is my my main

uh... advice that i give students about note-taking

and that's to go on a diet

which sounds like a very strange uh... suggestion

anyone want to guess what i mean by that

mmhhh....

yeah that's right we'll uh... when somebody goes on a diet and they lose a

lot of weight what happens to their body

it shrinks right

that's what you're trying to do now i just got through telling you that the

number one mistake that most people make is that they don't write enough

they sit and listen but they don't write enough that's a problem

the second most common problem is this and that is once their hand starts

moving and they start writing

they write way

too many

words and every time you're writing these words the teachers always talking

faster than your writing which means you're falling

further and further behind it is very frustrating especially if your teacher

really is fast like a lot of them are and so

uh... what you should do is learn to go on a diet

there are actually several ways

to do that but i'm gonna show you one and kind of illustrate it and then

give you another one two ideas

the first one so again this is under number three

is to learn how

to use abbreviations a lot when you take notes

most of you who take notes now probably use

a few of those

but i want you to learn how to use even

more and so uh... i want to ask a question before i show you what i have in mind here

uh... some people i ask do you use abbreviations when you take notes and

they say oh no

no no i would never do that

and i ask them why and what do you think there

reason is

yeah they they're they're terrified

and this is a good fear

they're terrified that they're gonna forget what that's an abbreviation of

and then when they go back to their notes they don't even understand them so

that's a problem okay but

i have something in mind for you so let me show you this

um... if you were in

a

history class

and you walked in on the day of the lecture and your teacher said

today in class we're going to talk about the period of history

in our country after

the civil war which was called reconstruction

so that's the whole subject of the lecture

well you're gonna have to write that word reconstruction

a lot

you don't want to write that a lot it's a very very long word

and also and some of you who are

taking more technical classes

if you don't know how to spell the word

that slows you down even more because you're trying to get it right so i wanna

write the word reconstruction here and i know how to spell it so that makes it

faster

but just look you don't have to time it on your watch or anything but look how

long it takes me even if i write fast

to write that word

what is the teacher doing while i'm writing that

yeah talking if you ever get a teacher who says that's a long word i'll wait

while you all write it down

you should almost have a heart attack they never do that they're just talking

ok so while you're writing

they're getting further

and further away from you and so this is a mistake

well one abbreviation that people sometimes think of for this would be

something like this

and that's a lot shorter and even though it doesn't seem like it matters that