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In this article you can find out:

• Why note-making is important
• How to structure your notes when researching
• How to create good note-making habits

This resource is suitable for broadly discursive essay writing for S1, S2 and S3 (Third and Fourth Level Curriculum for Excellence).

Making notes is the best way to sketch out and organise your research on a topic.

Remember, note-making is more than simply copying down information.

Note-making in a structured way allows us to:

• Be engaged and discerning researchers/readers
• Make better sense of information
• Organise information and ideas
• Make connections across the subject that we are researching and between sources that we are using

You have to be clear what it is you are setting out to find out.

To guide your reading, you might want to start with broad headings under which you can make notes.

Example

Imagine you are researching the general subject area of climate change.

• You have decided to narrow your focus to explore the issues surrounding rewilding our oceans.

• You might begin the note-making process by writing down some helpful headings under which you will make notes:

• What is rewilding?

• What are the benefits?

• What are the risks?

• Who opposes rewilding?

• Who supports rewilding?

As these are headings, you should highlight/bold type and underline them in your notes. This will help you navigate your notes when you come back to them at a later stage.

Good practice

In order to make good notes, you have to adopt some good note-making habits. Whether you are taking notes in a jotter, or typing them up in a Word document or spreadsheet, you should make sure to always do the following things:

1. Write down key source information (eg. name of source, author, web address, date of publication)
2. Provide a concise summary of key ideas contained in source (eg. 3-4 bullet points)
3. Highlight subject-specific jargon/terminology that you could use/should look up
4. Summarise your personal response to the reading

Example of structured notes

Source: 'Campaigners call for ocean rewilding to fight climate crisis', Newsround, 4th May 2021, /newsround/56977411

Even though you might think you know exactly what you want to argue when you set out to write your broadly discursive essay, your research might have changed your idea or focused it on another area.

It is really important that you review your notes to make sure you are clear about:

• What you think about a topic. Will you change your approach based on the information you have?
• What key ideas you want to make use of in your essay or report.