Reading and note taking

Table of Contents

Introduction

Reading and note-taking are crucial activities in the assignment process, enabling you to transform the sources you have found during the research phase into knowledge and understanding that you can then communicate in your own words. This module will focus on reading in support of an assignment question and note-taking as a crucial step in paraphrasing, summarising and incorporating the ideas of others into your assignments.

What you will learn

After completing this module, you should better understand:

• Strategies for reading efficiently for assignments and course work
• The fundamentals for evaluating information through critical reading
• The importance of note-taking and the different approaches you can take
• Organising your notes through mind-mapping to help prepare before writing your assignment

Test your knowledge

Unsure where to start? Discover your reading and note taking strengths and weaknesses. 

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I want to:

• Learn how to paraphrase, summarise and synthesise information
• Improve my academic writing skills
• Find more relevant sources
• Better understand what my assignment is asking me to do
• Better understand if I have met the marking criteria

Assignment process

Assignments are not always a linear journey, but usually you’ll have to complete the following steps:

Reading strategies

You won’t have time to read every source you find in-depth, so you will need to employ different strategies to help you read more efficiently. These strategies will ensure that you can get a broad understanding of your topic and dive into the details when necessary. To help with this process, we’ll explore the structure of a typical journal article and how it can be used to focus your reading efforts.

Navigating a journal article

Assignments often require the inclusion of scholarly research. Most commonly, this research is communicated through journal articles, so developing strategies to read them more efficiently is time well spent. Luckily, most journal articles will follow a similar structure and use headings, making it easier to know where to focus your attention.

The typical structure for a research article is as follows. Articles that are not reporting research (e.g. literature reviews) may not include a method or results section:

Abstract (summary)

A concise summary of the article, including the research methodology, results and what the findings might mean for the wider field.

Introduction (the why)

The authors introduce their topic, explain its importance and communicate their research questions (what they’re investigating) and hypothesis (what they expect to find). They may also provide an overview of the existing research – anything that is important for the reader to know so that they can understand the context in which the research is being performed (this is sometimes done in a separate ‘Literature Review’ section).

Methods (the how)

In articles reporting research, a section providing an overview of how the study was conducted will be included, with any relevant information about participants, the approach (surveys, interviews, experiments, etc.) and tools used. Including this information allows the research to be evaluated (strengths and weaknesses identified) and replicated (done again with a different context or participants).

Results (what happened)

This section will only be provided in research articles. Data is presented, usually in the form of tables, figures and graphs.

Discussion (what it means)

The authors explain the meaning of the data and evaluate whether the results successfully answer the research questions and support the initial hypothesis.

Conclusion (what did we learn)

Here the authors explain how their research fits into the wider understanding of the topic, the strengths and weaknesses of their study’s design, and recommendations on research next steps.

References

All research referenced in the article.

Skimming

Skimming is a strategy where you read quickly and superficially – you give the source a quick glance. It’s a technique used in speed reading that requires the reader to focus on the main message of the article, rather than closely reading the whole thing. It’s likely that you will be skimming articles as part of the searching or discovery process.

Focus on:

• Abstract or summary
• Any headings or subheadings
• Any lists or words in bold
• Any images and tables

These elements of the reading should give you a strong sense of what the article is about and whether it is relevant to answering your assignment question.

You should also double check the date the article was published to ensure it meets any requirements that have been communicated as part of the assignment.

Scanning

Scanning is a strategy where you look for something specific. When you’re using this technique, you seek out the keywords or concepts from your assignment question, concentrating on the information that’s most relevant to you.

Focus on:

• The introduction, which provides an overview of the topic, and the focus or point of the research.
• The thesis statement, which is usually the last sentence in the article introduction’s first paragraph. The thesis statement expresses the main idea, point, or claim.
• The conclusion, which sums up the results and their significance.
• Any headings and the first sentence of every paragraph. The first sentence of a paragraph introduces the topic of each paragraph. It will help you identify relevant paragraphs to read more closely.

HINT: Use CTRL + F (or Command + F on a Mac) to find specific words in a text.

Intensive reading

To read intensively means to read closely or carefully, ensuring that you understand important information and the author’s argument. Unlike skimming and scanning, when you’re reading intensively, you should read the source in its entirety to ensure that you get the full picture. Depending on the argument you wish to craft for your assignment, you may still choose to focus your efforts on particular sections of the article, such as the introduction and conclusion, and the collection or discussion of results. As you read, you should be actively thinking about what you are reading, keeping your assignment question and thesis statement at the forefront of your mind.

It is at this stage that you would make notes from the text, as the skimming and scanning stage has established its relevance and appropriateness. To explore various note-taking techniques, see the Note-taking page of this guide. As you are intensively reading you would also be evaluating the information and arguments that are being presented. You can employ critical reading strategies to do this. <h2 id="academic-writing-reading-and-note-taking-critical-reading">Critical reading</h2>

Critical reading is an important aspect of intensive reading and is a process whereby you read to understand and evaluate the information. It’s a crucial step for source selection. You want to ensure that you are using quality evidence in your assignments, and you do this by selecting high-quality sources.

Questions to consider

As you read, there are several questions that you should keep in mind. They are introduced briefly in this section and explored in further detail below.

• Who wrote the information? Can you establish their credentials? Does the information fall within their area of expertise?
• Are the views/opinions/theories expressed backed up by valid and thorough research?
• What was the broader context in which the work was created? Was there something happening, locally or globally, that may have influenced the point of view (e.g. events like COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, regional/global instability, etc.)?
• Who is the intended audience? For example, is it a textbook intended for university students? Or is it an article aimed at researchers with 10+ years’ experience in the field?
• Where was it published? For example, an article on wellbeing that has been published in a psychology journal will have a different focus than one published in a marketing journal.

Evaluating sources

While keeping the above questions in mind, the key consideration when deciding whether to include a source in your assignment is whether the author and the information is credible.

One of the easiest ways to evaluate a source is through lateral reading, which is the process of validating an author’s claims and conclusions by looking for confirmation or support from other sources. When lateral reading, you check facts, arguments or background information included in a source by performing quick searches in a search engine like Google to establish whether the information can be verified. If it is, your confidence in the trustworthiness of the information can increase.

Wikipedia, information published by credible news organisations, or reports published by trusted organisations can all be useful tools in this process. Watch the video below to learn more about lateral reading to evaluate information.

Watch this YouTube video

When reading laterally, consider the following:

The who and the why

Perform an assessment of the author or organisation responsible for the information.

• Are they suitably qualified to be writing on the topic?
• Is there evidence of any bias or a conflict of interest?
• Why was the content created? Is its purpose to inform, persuade, entertain or sell a product? Only giving one side of the story or using emotive or incendiary language could suggest a goal to persuade or manipulate a reader.

CHECK:

• Look up the author/organisation on social media sites like LinkedIn, ResearchGate or Twitter(X) to establish credentials and their interest in the topic.
• A general Google search may lead you to interviews, personal blogs or their affiliation to specific organisations, as well as press reports related to research grants, potential controversies or other relevant material. The search will help you establish the author/organisation’s credibility, as well as their motivation for exploring the topic.

The what

You may want to confirm any key statistics or explore in more depth any information that surprises you.

CHECK: Perform a Google search to check specific information. Has the research been cited in other studies? Have the statistics been included in news or organisation reports? If they have, is the additional source disputing any aspects of the information?

For example, in your research, you discover a statistic reported by the World Economic Forum 2023 that 40% of all working hours could be impacted by AI’s like ChatGPT. Performing a Google search for ‘40% of working hours lost to AI’ confirms a number of sources reporting that same statistic, as well as the original source of the information.

The when

For some research areas, the timeliness of the information will be important and many assignment briefs will note a timeframe of publication that is acceptable. You need to know when the information was published or updated.

CHECK: If you cannot easily locate a publication date on the source, or if you’re not sure whether specific statistics or case studies are current, perform a quick Google search to see if you can find additional sources that provide this information

Note taking

Note-taking is an integral part of successful study and learning, helping you to organise and transform the content you hear or read into your own understanding. Note-taking helps you move confidently between the reading and writing stages, enabling you to capture key ideas in your own words and establish links between different sources.

Be sure to keep accurate records of the things you read for referencing, including the details of the author, date, title and source (where you can find the work). There are a few different ways you can do this. One of them is by using a reference management tool like EndNote.

Strategies

Good notes are useful notes. They should be a stepping stone between the information you receive – from your lectures and readings – to enabling you to demonstrate your knowledge on a topic in an assignment.

So, how do you take good, useful notes? That all depends on you and your learning style. There are many ways of taking notes – we’re going to expand on a couple; however, if you don’t see anything that works for you, check out #studyspo for some additional inspiration and approaches.

All note-taking styles do have a few things in common. When recording your notes:

• Keep your assignment question and thesis statement in mind as you read and take notes. It will help guide you to the most useful information in the source.
• Record useful information in your own words, rather than copying from the source word for word. This is important in ensuring that you understand the content, as well as helping you paraphrase and avoid accidental plagiarism. You won’t be submitting your notes - no one else will see them - so they don’t need to be written in perfect, academic English.
• Think about other sources that you have read, and the links or disagreements between them. This will help you to synthesise in your writing.
• Always record the details of the source for your reference list (and so that you can find it again!).

Watch this short video for 10 tips!

Watch this YouTube video

Let’s look at a couple of note-taking strategies - Cornell note taking, mind mapping, and the outlining method - in more depth:

Cornell note-taking

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The Cornell note-taking method focuses on an individual source, and provides structure to the note-taking process. It gives you the opportunity to record key information from the source, pose questions to yourself and write a summary in your own words.

Method:

1. On a piece of paper, draw a line horizontally two-thirds of the way down the page.
2. In the top section, draw a vertical line, dividing the page in two.
3. Label the top-left section ‘cue’, the top-right section, ‘notes’ and the bottom section, ‘summary’.
4. Complete the notes section first with facts, definitions, important details and anything noteworthy.
5. Next, complete the summary section, capturing the main ideas of the article. You should do this without referring to the article itself as it will help ensure that the summary is done in your own words, but you can refer back to your notes.
6. Lastly, complete the cue section by recording any questions you have after reading. Is there anything you didn’t understand? Obvious connections or contrasts to other readings? Gaps in knowledge or understanding you need to fill?

Example:

Mind-mapping

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Mind mapping is a visual note-taking style that emphasises the connections between ideas. It can be used to capture notes from a single source, or to link ideas from a number of different sources together. Mind mapping is an effective strategy for assignment planning, allowing you to establish the main concepts that will form your paragraphs and the readings and connections that support them.

Method (if capturing notes from a single article):

1. Write the main idea from an article in the centre of a blank piece of paper. Draw a circle around it.
2. Identify the main concepts and write them down too, with a line linking them back to the main idea.
3. Under each concept, write down the important facts, definitions, anything note-worthy that relates to that concept
4. Identify the links between information by drawing lines to connect them.

Method (if summarising multiple sources)

1. Write your assignment question in the centre of the page and draw a circle around it.
2. Around this circle, write the main ideas or concepts you would like to cover in your assignment. Draw a circle around them too.
3. Under those ideas, write down the important facts, supporting sources, and any particular statistics or research you would like to include.

Example:

The outline method

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The outline method is a structured note-taking style, where information from a source is organised into main ideas and supporting information using indentations. In practice, your notes will look something like this:

• This is a main idea/topic
  • This is a sub-topic or an idea that supports or illustrates the main topic
    • This is a supporting fact, piece of evidence or thought related to the main idea.

Method:

1. Read through the source in full to help you identify the main points before you start the note-taking approach.
2. Record your first main idea/point as a bullet point.
3. Elaborate on the main ideas underneath, with a new bullet point for each new idea. Record these new points further from the left-margin, so at a glance, you can identify how main ideas you’re capturing. Try to keep your notes brief, aiming for one sentence per point.
4. If required, support your second-level notes with more information with more information, always moving your new level further from the left-margin.

Example:

Synthesising

Note-taking strategies are useful for identifying information from a source that is useful for your assignment. They allow you to isolate the most relevant information to your question and begin the translation process from the author’s words to your own. Note-taking strategies are also great for looking at the bigger picture, combining the things you’ve read, with the information presented in your lectures, along with any ideas and opinions you have. This process of putting things together is called synthesising; it allows you to create connections and form a more complete picture of the topic.

When you synthesise you identify connections in the research, points where there are common findings or ideas. You will also be able to see where there are different or contrasting ideas. Establishing these connections is a key step as you move towards writing your assignment.

Planning your assignment

You can now use your chosen note taking strategy, or strategies, to begin synthesising the information that you have found, finding main concepts that will become paragraphs or sections in your assignment. Synthesising is a key element of integrating your sources, as it allows you to begin to plan what information you will need to paraphrase or summarise in your assignment. More information can be found in the Writing guide.

As you start to see how your sources are connected you can begin thinking about how they will go together in your assignment. You can now start to think about the structure that will hold your assignment together and creating an assignment outline using your notes.

Your notes may help you to start considering:

• How many paragraphs your assignment might contain;
• The number of sections you may be required to have; and
• Any relevant quotes or statistics you may like to include.

As you piece together your information and begin to you make your plan, you could also start to note down the primary elements of your assignment, such as a thesis statement for your introduction and topic sentences for your paragraphs.

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