Lesson 4:
Taking Notes
Topics
Why Take Notes?
Working with Sources and Taking Notes
Note Taking Techniques
Note Taking Guidelines and Best Practices
Why Take Notes
 While Notetaking can be time consuming, it’s a
critical stage the research process.
 Why take notes?
 Notetaking begins the process of writing the paper.
 Good notes will speed the process of drafting the paper.
 Good notes will lead to a stronger finished product.
ENGLISH COMPOSITION TWO
Working with Sources and Taking Notes
When working with sources, make
information your own by:
 Quoting Sources
 Paraphrasing
 Summarizing
ENGLISH COMPOSITION TWO
Quoting Sources
 Reasons for quoting sources
 The author makes the point in an interesting way.
 The author is an expert who is widely recognized.
 Your paper is on a literary topic.
 The prose is unusual, surprising, or memorable.
 Rules for quoting sources
 Quote selectively
 Provide a context
 Follow up
ENGLISH COMPOSITION TWO
Paraphrasing
 Paraphrasing is restating information in your own
words.
 Instead of directly quoting a source, try
paraphrasing.
Paraphrasing forces you to engage the information; it
forces you to think.
 By paraphrasing, you are essentially writing part of the
draft.

ENGLISH COMPOSITION TWO
Paraphrasing Guidelines
Best practices for paraphrasing include:
Read the source material several times.
2. Rewrite the material in your own words without
looking at the original source.
3. Compare your rewrite to the original source.
1.


Verify the rewrite is accurate and consistent with the intent
of the source.
Verify the rewrite is original and not just a reshuffling of
words.
ENGLISH COMPOSITION TWO
Summarizing
 Summarizing is reducing longer material into a
brief statement. Like Paraphrasing, summarizing
requires thinking about the material
 Summarizing can include
Main points
 Overviews
 Condensation

 Best practices for summarizing include:
 Ensure the summary captures the basic idea of the source
 As you draft, summarize often to avoid a string of
undigested quotations.
ENGLISH COMPOSITION TWO
Note Taking Techniques
Major note taking techniques include:
 The Double-Entry Journal
 The Research Log
 Narrative Notetaking
 Online Research Notebooks
ENGLISH COMPOSITION TWO
The Double Entry Journal
The Double Entry Journal is a twocolumn entry in a notebook or Word
document
 Top of the page contains bibliographic
information for the source
 Left column contains notes from the source
 Right column contains your comments on what
you collected from each source
ENGLISH COMPOSITION TWO
The Research Log
To create a Research Log:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Record the bibliographic information
Write an open-ended response to the reading
Mine the source for “nuggets”
Write another open-ended response entitled
“The Source Reconsidered”
ENGLISH COMPOSITION TWO
Narrative Note Taking
The Steps in Narrative Notetaking:
1.
2.
3.
Fastwrite a summary for at least one minute
Skip a line and fastwrite the story of your
thinking.
Repeat Step 2 for another point
ENGLISH COMPOSITION TWO
Online Research Notebooks
Several tools exist to help keep research
notes online.
 Zotero
 Evernote
 Google Docs
 PDF Annotation Software
ENGLISH COMPOSITION TWO
Notetaking Guidelines and Best Practices
Best practices for note taking include:
 Taking thorough notes.
 Capturing bibliographic information.
 Taking notes in a way that makes you engage with
and think about (not just capturing), the
information.
ENGLISH COMPOSITION TWO