Hey everyone!
Welcome back to Lisa’s Study Guides, your go-to destination for all things related to
English.
It is Monday after school, so you know that I’ve got new and valuable advice for you
today.
And if you didn’t know already, I run a website called ‘vcestudyguides.com’ which
is an amazing community of tutors working together to offer you the best resources possible
for VCE English, Literature, English Language and EAL as well.
So if you’re not studying VCE, that’s okay you can definitely go ahead and check
it out.
But today is a little bit different because I have someone very special with me…
I got AMANDA HERE!
Hii!
*laughs* Hey guys!
It’s Amanda and here I’m with Lisa today to tell you all about effective note-taking,
especially for all of you who’ll be going back to school!
So let’s get into it.
YES!
Let’s Go.
Kick it old school!
The cons of writing everything on your laptop is that everything will be arranged in a really
horizontal fashion.
You don’t have much freedom to create mind maps.
I know some of you out there will be absolute wizards on Word document, but I personally
failed miserably at trying to create a pretty mind map for myself.
So, on paper, you’re just that much less inhibited with your pen and your brain and
just writing all your great ideas on paper.
And not to say that typing on your laptop is completely useless, but definitely a combination
of handwritten and typing will be helpful.
Yes, definitely.
So spice it up a little bit, balance the two.
For example, for chapter 7, I’m going to use quotes typed up all on my laptop but for
the more nitty-gritty stuff like analysis of your characters, your theme mind maps,
do that on paper.
It’s much easier.
On the contrary, writing with good pens does not necessarily equate to better note-taking.
You can have some really pretty pens, and you can have some pretty nice masterpieces
after you’ve used all those pens with all those colors and it looks fantastic, but it
doesn’t actually mean that you’re probably going to be that effective in your note-taking
as if you were using a bad pen for example.
What is actually more important is how you actually interact with your text, how you’re
interacting and taking on that information that’s ahead of you.
So things like quotes, dialogue, you can’t just write them down and expect them to look
pretty.
And then therefore, remember - I’ld say just go that extra mile!
You have highlighter, you have wrote some notes along the page and that’s great already..
But you have to go that extra mile and go challenge yourself, challenge the text and
ask “why do I hate Daisy Buchanan - Great Gatsby’?
You know, justify your state of evidence because you need to really interact with your text.
The text is meant to challenge and really question you, and so question it back.
Don’t be passive and just take in the chapter and take everything in the face value, just
have fun with it and really challenge the text because that’s what your teachers want
you to do.
You just don’t need to take everything in it and say that ‘I agree’, you know..
You’re meant to challenge and question, yes, no, I like it, or I don’t.
So what is the author trying to convey to you and you know, reading your novel or watching
mere three or four times will not richen your understanding of you know, whatever the underlying
message is, so really interact with the text and don’t be a passive reader.
Have fun with it!
Yeah..
You can have fun while reading!
*laughs*
Get interactive!
So many people focus on creating “great” notes that eventually they forget about the
organizational side of things.
So there’s no point in creating good notes, or really pretty notes.
It’s like we mentioned before, when in the end, it just becomes another big mess.
Pretty though!
Got to give you that, but we must remember how to best organize it so we can access them
in a really time manner because when you’re a bit nervous, you’re slightly stress, you
don’t want to be having to flip through your notes and getting yourself even more
anxiety.
Want to prove that is that one thing that I like to do is to create summary tabs, so
you can use a sticky note.
You just write down the title, the main characters in it, and the themes of the chapter that
you found most prominent.
And you just stick that on your pace and then you can continue analysis, but if you just
want to remember things quickly, just do that summary tab.
It makes it a lot easier condensing the information.
If you’re studying for English for example, then separating your themes into different
colors and highlighting it in different colors is a really fantastic idea.
And that’s a great way to segment the information so it’s a lot easier for you to access later
on and also it’s easier for you to remember it as well.
Get organized!
So you have already done your amazing notes, you’ve already categorized with themes,
and your pretty pens, and color coded looking gorgeous, but one of my favorite ways to motivate
myself to actually reread the notes because let’s face it..
Studying can get a little bit agonizing, and that’s okay, so just write encouragements
along the side as you have within your notes.
Sometimes you gotta be your number one fan you know.
Be your own hype team and just motivate yourself.
Woohoo.
So things like I like to write on the column of my page, “You can do this Amanda”,
i know it seems really foolish and infantile but trust me it does work.
Yeah I absolutely love that!
I think it’s so important to congratulate yourself at the end of the day’s hard work.
And sometimes you’re not going to put in as much work as you would have liked for example,
but definitely don’t beat yourself over it because it’s only going to make you feel
worst.
Just acknowledge what you have done for that day and what I used to do is I would write
down a checklist on sticky note and then I would tick them as I went, and whatever I
couldn’t finish I would just save the next day..
But at least then I could see absolutely everything that I had done that day, and all the ticks
that were next to it.
So you don’t forget even the little things that you’ve done.
Whether or not it’s you know that one challenging question for math that was done like 5 hours
ago and you can’t remember it like doing it now, but you know, you recall that once
you’ve written it down and you’ve ticked it off.
It’s like YES!
Make yourself feel good!
It’s all about feeling good.
Absolutely!
Contarry to..
Er..
Contarry?
Contrary.
Country So many people are focused on the organization
side of note-taking that they actually forget about the ……… Forget about how to actually
organize some notes and like really…
So..
So that’s pretty much it for today, thank you so much Amanda for coming!
It’s my pleasure.
It’s so fun filming this with you.
Amanda is one of my selected tutors at VCE Study Guides, so if you’re ever interested
in sharing with us or you come to one of our workshops, it’s probably very likely that
you’re going to see her there.
If you like this video then please please please gives us a thumbs up.
We worked really hard for this and if you’d like to see Amanda come back again, then we’d
be really looking forward for that too.
So comment below if you’ve got any questions that you wanted to ask us or anything you
want us to cover next.
And apart from that, we will see you guys - well I will see you guys next Monday!
And hopefully you’ll see Amanda soon!
Have a fabulous week everyone and hope to see you guys soon!
Bye guys!
See you next Monday!