Just as listening means more than simply hearing sounds, taking notes requires much more than writing down everything that your instructor says.  Productive notetaking involves your ears, your brain, and your hand in a complex process. 

Here's how it's done:

 

1. Listen to the lecture.

2. As you listen, let your brain decide what you need to know.  Keep asking yourself: what is important here?

3. Translate the teacher's words (what you need to know) into your own words.

4. Write your translation down as notes. Whatever you do, don't try to become a human tape recorder. Every word your teacher says is not golden and trying to capture them all on paper will only frustrate and overwhelm you. The best notetakers are the students who constantly ask themselves: what do I need to know from this?

5. Don't let your mind wander during "dry spells." In any lecture, the teacher can digress or repeat (and repeat and repeat . . .) a point that you understood a long time ago. Don't allow yourself to get bored.  Instead, use "downtime" to think about the lecture, predict where the lecture is going, the type of questions the instructor might ask on an exam, or even summarize mentally what you have heard so far.

 

What should your notes look like? Here are 4 methods of taking notes:

Method 1: Informal Outline

Method 2: Memory Margin

Method 3: Summary Space

Method 4: Lecture Maps