Study Skills - Note Taking

 
Reviewing

Do you know what the most important part of note taking is? Reviewing your notes after class. Your notes do very little if they are never looked at again! On average, people forget up to 80 percent of the information they learn within the first 24 hours of learning it. You can dramatically increase the amount of information you retain by reviewing the information at some time during that first 24 hours. When reviewing, you want to edit and clarify your notes as you pull out and study the main ideas and key points. One way of doing this is by using the Cornell System. To further improve your memory of the information, do a weekly review as well. Pick a night of the week (weekends work well for this) and go over all of your notes from the past week of class for all of your classes. Spend about 30 minutes per class, or however long you need reviewing your notes.

Review is also important for remembering information learned in textbooks, and can be done in almost the same manner. After reading each chapter or section, do a short review within the first 24 hours. Then, do a weekly review of all that you have read.

Although nobody is anxious to add another task to their list of things to do, reviewing will often save you time in the long run, since consistent review leads to less before-test cramming. Studying for one hour a day for four days is just as effective as studying for six hours on one day.

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