Page 84 - Foundations of Learning, 4th Edition (Revised)

Compare your notes taken from a reading with those of someone in your class. You may be surprised
at the differing opinions (reflected in what is written) about what was important. You can often
improve your notes by sharing and combining notes with another person. This allows you to clarify
points and add any important omissions.

Highlighting

Highlighting can be an effective study technique which makes it easier and quicker to reread
and review written material. You can focus your study and review time on the most important
material, spending less time on or completely skipping unmarked sections. This can be especially
valuable when many chapters of material are covered for an exam. Highlighting keeps you

alert as you read. Highlighting requires that you make decisions continually about what is
important, and should be highlighted, and what is not important. Effective highlighting
involves a balance between highlighting too much and not highlighting enough. Since it is
much faster and easier to highlight material (than to write notes), many readers make the
mistake of highlighting too much text. If you are not careful, entire sections that could be
summarized in one or two sentences can become bright blocks of ink.

The following are a few suggestions for highlighting.
• Read a paragraph first before doing any highlighting. Try to avoid highlighting a sentence
as you are first reading it. Read and then assess what should be highlighted.

• Highlight meaningful phrases and the most important parts of sentences

• As a general rule, if the material is important enough to be in your notes, then it should also
be highlighted

• Highlighting should include key words, lists, definitions, formulas, and examples

Try these suggestions and decide what works for you. Whatever you decide, if you highlight, you
must be prepared to read and reread the highlighted lines to help you learn the material.

Note Cards

A good method for organizing information is to write your notes on file cards. Note cards provide a
flexible way of organizing and recording information because they can be easily sorted. Note cards
are especially useful for learning new terminology. Limit the amount of information on any one
card. When applicable, identify the source on each card including the name and the page number.
Regularly compare your notes to your outline to determine where you have accumulated enough
support and where you still need to find more.

Assess Your Notes
Periodically assess your notes. A good time to assess your note-taking is after a graded exam is
returned. Check to see how many answers to exam questions can be found in your notes. You can do
this for notes taken from lectures and those from reading the textbook. This process of assessment
is how you improve your note-taking skills and your future test scores.

78 Foundations of Learning