Students' zone - What’s the best way to take notes in lectures and seminars?

All too often, the notes we take in a lecture or seminar seem to make perfect sense at the time – but are utterly incomprehensible a week or so later. Key tips for better note taking are:

• Do some reading around the topic beforehand, and get a rough idea what the important points or issues are – and build your notes around that (You can use the revision summaries at the end of each chapter of the book to provide this sort of ‘advance map’)

• Rewrite your notes soon after the lecture, restructuring them to reflect the key points better

• Rewrite your notes again once you’ve done more reading and developed a better understanding

• You may find these websites a useful source of advice on note-taking: