Lesson 4: Taking Notes Topics Why Take Notes? Working with Sources and Taking Notes Note Taking Techniques Note Taking Guidelines and Best Practices

Why Take Notes While Notetaking can be time consuming, it’s a critical stage the research process. Why take notes? Notetaking begins the process of writing the paper. Good notes will speed the process of drafting the paper. Good notes will lead to a stronger finished product.  

Working with Sources and Taking Notes When working with sources, make information your own by: Quoting Sources Paraphrasing Summarizing Depending on your topic, any or all of these are potential sources for finding experts. The works cited pages of your sources are always a good place to find experts. If you are writing on a local oriented topic, the phone book will be more helpful than if you are working on a historical topic, for example. For best results do not rely on a single approach for finding experts. Try all that are appropriate to your topic.

Quoting Sources Reasons for quoting sources Rules for quoting sources The author makes the point in an interesting way. The author is an expert who is widely recognized. Your paper is on a literary topic. The prose is unusual, surprising, or memorable. Rules for quoting sources Quote selectively Provide a context Follow up uote Selectively: mine distinctive phrases or sentences and weave them into your prose. The college paper should contain no more than 10 to 20 percent quoted material Provide a Context: who said it and why is it relevant? Follow up: analyze, argue with, amplify, explain, or highlight the quoted material

Paraphrasing Paraphrasing is restating information in your own words. Instead of directly quoting a source, try paraphrasing. Paraphrasing forces you to engage the information; it forces you to think. By paraphrasing, you are essentially writing part of the draft.

Paraphrasing Guidelines Best practices for paraphrasing include: Read the source material several times. Rewrite the material in your own words without looking at the original source. Compare your rewrite to the original source. Verify the rewrite is accurate and consistent with the intent of the source. Verify the rewrite is original and not just a reshuffling of words. Make sure that you make it clear to the reader where your paraphrase begins and ends and where your own ideas or comments are included. Don't be afraid to put the original source's unique terms or phrases in quotation marks as part of your paraphrase. In all cases, remember to identify that you are referring to an outside source in the body of your paper and to provide a complete source at the appropriate place in your paper.

Summarizing Summarizing can include Summarizing is reducing longer material into a brief statement. Like Paraphrasing, summarizing requires thinking about the material Summarizing can include Main points Overviews Condensation Best practices for summarizing include: Ensure the summary captures the basic idea of the source As you draft, summarize often to avoid a string of undigested quotations. Main points. Use summary when your readers need to know the main point the original source makes but not the supporting details. Overviews. Sometimes you may want to devise a few sentences that will effectively support your discussion without going on and on. Use summary to provide an overview or an interesting aside without digressing too far from your paper's focus. Condensation. You may have taken extensive notes on a particular article or observation only to discover in the course of drafting that you do not need all that detail. Use summary to condense lengthy or rambling notes into a few effective sentences.

Note Taking Techniques Major note taking techniques include: The Double-Entry Journal The Research Log Narrative Notetaking Online Research Notebooks

The Double Entry Journal The Double Entry Journal is a two-column entry in a notebook or Word document Top of the page contains bibliographic information for the source Left column contains notes from the source Right column contains your comments on what you collected from each source Make sure to include the page number in the left column so you can easily locate the passage again See the bullet list on page 127 of The Curious Researcher for questions to ask when completing the right column

To create a Research Log: The Research Log To create a Research Log: Record the bibliographic information Write an open-ended response to the reading Mine the source for “nuggets” Write another open-ended response entitled “The Source Reconsidered” Review Figure 3.5 in The Curious Researcher for an example of a Research Log

The Steps in Narrative Notetaking: Fastwrite a summary for at least one minute Skip a line and fastwrite the story of your thinking. Repeat Step 2 for another point Your first fastwrite should follow the prompt: “What I understand this to be saying is . . .” Your second fastwrite should follow the prompt: “When I first began reading this, I thought _______, and now I think ________

Online Research Notebooks Several tools exist to help keep research notes online. Zotero Evernote Google Docs PDF Annotation Software Zotero organizes digital documents in project folders and organizes citation information. Evernote allows you to organize your research sources and associated notes and makes them available via the internet, smartphones, and tablets. Google Docs allows you to organize and access information from the internet, too.

Notetaking Guidelines and Best Practices Best practices for note taking include: Taking thorough notes. Capturing bibliographic information. Taking notes in a way that makes you engage with and think about (not just capturing), the information.