Take Good Notes
- katoghigian
- Jun 7, 2021
- 2 min read
Updated: May 3, 2023
THIS is the real secret to painlessly writing a research paper.
Someone asked me the other day how I helped students make an outline. This was during a debate over how helpful outlines are (very, in my opinion) and how, in that teacher's experience, students often draw a blank at this stage.
Outlining is critically important and wildly useful if done "right" and I'll post more about that later, but the answer to the question really goes back to note-taking. (And THAT goes back to how to extract information from sources by doing as little reading as possible, so check back later for that, too.)
So here is a tip that can make your writing lives easier: When you take notes, write key words or short phrases ONLY, and use quotation marks for anything you copy down directly. Everything else is paraphrased or summarized. Include the citation. Always. If paraphrasing and summarizing are difficult and English is your second (L2) or an additional language, take notes in your L1. In fact, if you can, take all your notes (except for quotations) in another language.
This is useful for two reasons. First, you won't need to worry about plagiarism. If you are looking at an original source and trying to paraphrase or summarize it, you cannot. It's nearly impossible. Your brain thinks: this is the only/best way to say that. But if those sources are in another folder tucked out of sight and you are only looking at words and phrases in your notes, it's much easier to create your own sentences for those ideas. Secondly, think of those ideas (words and phrases) in terms of items in categories that belong in specific sections of your paper, and sort them accordingly. For example, say you are looking at facts you have collected about using the Tesla method (as in Nikolai, not the electric car) as a single-wire reactive power receiver. Look at your notes and find everything that would belong in the Introduction section; in other words, ideas that support the situation (why we would need such a method; first paragraph), the problem (why what we have now doesn't work; second paragraph), and the proposed solution (third paragraph). Now you have all the ideas sorted into sections of your paper (intro, [explanation section if necessary], method, results, and conclusion). And voilà, there's your outline.
