Note-taking is essential to the process of reading for understanding. As Akira Kurosawa says in Something Like an Autobiography, the process of taking notes supports us in analyzing and synthesizing our “experiences” and “memory” to create new ideas and expressions.
I've forgotten who it was that said creation is memory. My own experiences and the various things I have read remain in my memory and become the basis upon which I create something new. I couldn't do it out of nothing. For this reason, since the time I was a young man I have always kept a notebook handy when I read a book. I write down my reactions and what particularly moves me. I have stacks and stacks of these college notebooks, and when I go off to write a script, these are what I read. Somewhere they always provide me with a point of breakthrough. Even for single lines of dialogue I have taken hints from these notebooks. So what I want to say is, don’t read books while lying down in bed. (Kurosawa)
Thus, this book on writing toward social justice begins with a discussion of note-taking.
Relation to Social Justice
As I mentioned in the overall description of the summary-response essay assignment description, our everyday lives matter. That includes all that we read, view, observe, hear, and otherwise take in. However, we don’t always have the time or space to process what we are taking in in the moment.
Recorded videos are a form of note-taking. Some of the most powerful social activism of our time have come from the world witnessing injustice recorded on video, e.g., George Floyd or Michael Brown.
In our everyday lives, this is why doctors take notes; courts and professionals take court transcripts and meeting minutes; police officers write reports; child care professionals conduct observations and write observational reports; social workers maintain case notes. Some of the best writers and thinkers keep daily journals of their lives.
All of these forms of note-taking are to support us in capturing what’s important so that we can analyze what we we have received and thus choose the best response to any given situation.
In the case of this class, you are taking notes on what you read or watch in order to better understand what you have read or watched and to respond to the texts in a variety of written forms.
In English 96, we talk quite a bit about annotation — writing in the margins of the text and/or writing on the text. However, sometimes, you will not have the printed document or access to electronic social annotation tools like Hypothesis. Thus, I would like to talk more generally about note-taking and how to take notes.
Note-taking includes notation and annotation. The Online Etymology Dictionary distinguishes them as follows:
Notation: the process of taking notes; "Meaning "to set down in writing, make a memorandum of" is from early 14c." (Note. v.)
Annotation: the process of adding notes to a text; "a note added by way of comment or explanation" (Annotation)
About the Ten Step Note-Taking Process
Often students wonder what they should capture as notes when reading a text. Several note-taking methods, such as the Cornell Note-taking Method, exist to answer this question. The broadest answer is that your notes should support your needs and/or the work that you anticipate having to do in the class. For this class, you will need to take notes in a manner that will allow you to write a summary, respond to a text using your prior knowledge and experiences, and anticipate questions about vocabulary and ideas within a short answer-multiple choice exam.
This ten step note-taking process is designed to do just that. The process, encapsulated in a handout later in this chapter, is a list of 10 questions to answer regarding the assigned reading or video or podcast. Each step is a question. Answering these questions thoroughly will support you in any future writing assignments regarding the reading.
Steps 1-3: Identifying the Text
The first three questions of the process entail identifying the source of the text. Where did it come from? Who wrote it? What’s it called? Who was the intended audience?
For this class, future classes in the composition sequence, and most other college classes, you will be expected to share where you got the information you are communicating in your papers or in oral presentations. So, you will need to know the title and the author at least. You should also include the date and where the reading is published or posted if you want to have the most complete sourcing information.
For #3, sometimes, it’s important to note whether the text is academic or popular. For research classes, you may be instructed to only use academic sources. You can tell often by publication information (Was it published by a university printing press?), by the style in which the text is written (Does it have references?), by what the author includes in the foreword (Does it have a foreword? Does the author tell you in their introduction?).
Steps 4-6: Connecting to the Text
Steps 4-6 are where you start to do your due diligence to build your understanding of the reading.
I would encourage you to do two readings of any assigned reading. In the first reading, just try to read straight through. Put a dot or otherwise make note of where you see vocabulary words that you don’t know or words that you like or sentences you like or dislike or any section you know you would like or need to reread more carefully.
At the end of the first reading, check in with yourself and ask: Was that an easy or a hard read? Do I feel like I basically understand what the author is saying? If not, where did I stop understanding? What do I need to know or what would I like to know to get a deeper understanding of this reading.
In the second reading, read through again but much more slowly. Stop and actually take notes on the vocabulary words you marked. Look up the definitions and write them down. I recommend using Merriam-Webster for basic definitions and Online Etymology Dictionary if you want to go deeper into the meaning of a word.
Look at where you placed dots: If they were areas where you felt like you could relate to the author, write that down. For instance, the author might share something that reminds you of what a family member or a former teacher said.
Perhaps you understood just fine; you just didn’t like HOW the author communicated their ideas. Write that down and, to the best of your ability, write down why you didn’t like how they communicated their ideas or why you enjoyed reading their ideas. Review all of your dots and write notes about what made you mark that section — maybe you want to ask the teacher a question about what was there.
This is at the core of what they say about reading to learn. You have to enter into a conversation with the author if you mean to learn from them.
Steps 7-10: Making Sense of the Text
These last four steps are essential to the process of writing a summary, which is one of the key assignments of the CRT in English 96 and to writing an annotated bibliography or a literature review in a research paper class like English 102.
I always recommend that students answer these questions with the actual sentences from the text. Write the sentence or sentences down word for word and put it in quotation marks (that’s a direct quotation). Only after you do that should you try to rewrite the sentence in your own words or paraphrase it. Do not try to paraphrase and take notes at the same time. That is how people end up being accused of plagiarism. Again, first, write out the direct quote. Then, paraphrase it so that you better understand what is being said.
Ten Step Note-Taking (Handout)
Instructions
As you read the assigned reading, answer the questions below.
Though this is a process for note-taking, you can also use these steps to annotate. Remember: Annotation is writing on the assigned reading itself; note-taking is writing your notes about the reading on a separate document.
Some of the steps require that you use direct quotes from the assigned reading. Be sure to use quotation marks so that you are clear about what are your words versus what are the author’s words.
Steps
- What is the title of the assigned reading?
- Who is the author? Or, who wrote the assigned reading?
- Was the author writing to you (students), to your professor (academics), or to everybody (a general or popular audience)?
- What vocabulary words did you have to look up? What vocabulary words might be important to the meaning of the assigned reading? Write at least two vocabulary words/phrases from the assigned reading and define those words/phrases. Be sure to indicate where you found the definitions whether it be from a dictionary or from the assigned reading itself.
- How do you relate to what the author says? Identify at least two sentences or sections where the author says something to which you can relate from past experiences or prior knowledge. Write out the sentences as direct quotes, and discuss why you found it relatable.
- Think like a writer. What do you like or dislike about HOW the author wrote the assigned reading? Identify at least two sentences or sections that you liked or disliked and explain why you liked them or disliked them.
- What do you think the reading is about? What’s the thesis of the reading? If there is a sentence in the reading that you can identify as the thesis statement, write that here as a direct quote. Otherwise, in your own words, discuss what you think is the main point of the reading.
- Why do you think that that is what the reading is about? Find and write down as direct quotes additional sentences or passages that prove that the reading is focused on this main point.
- What evidence does the author use to prove that their main point or thesis is true? In your own words, describe the kind of evidence that the author uses. Do they use facts and statistics, personal stories, quotes from other thinkers, something else?
- Write out as a direct quote the sentences that represent their best or strongest evidence. Describe why you think this is their strongest evidence.
