Public Speaking

Record Your Information (^91)
Two methods are common for recording information: taking notes (pen and paper) or
downloading and marking up materials. Choose the one that matches your learning
style or your topic.

Pen and Paper Notes

With all the technology available to download, copy, and print materials, why would

anyone use pen and paper to take notes? New research on students who wrote out their

notes found that they recorded less overall information than note takers who used lap-

tops, but they did more summarizing and paraphrasing. In the long run, they performed

better on tests that required higher-order thinking skills such as understanding con-

cepts, making inferences, and integrating ideas. This study suggests that writing out

notes helps you be more mindful about the overall framework and the crucial informa-

tion in an article.^36 Better yet, writing out information can help you avoid cut-and-paste

plagiarism because it’s easier to jot down key ideas and summarize the material than to

copy long paragraphs. A structured method is to use two types of three-by-five-inch

note cards: source cards and information cards.

•   Make a separate source card for each reference, using a standard bibliographic

format. Include the author, date, article or chapter title, book or periodical title, place

of publication (for books), followed by the page number(s). For online information,

add the website title, sponsoring organization, date you retrieved the material, and the

site’s URL. Make source cards for materials gathered from nonprint material as well.

It is helpful to annotate this bibliography, meaning that you write a brief description

of the information you found in the source. See Figure 7.1 for an example.

Next, use a separate information card for each idea, statistic, quotation, example,

and so on you find. Use quotation marks around direct quotations and each uniquely

worded phrase, and write down the page number for each piece of information. This

practice will help you avoid plagiarism. On the top of each card, create a heading that

classifies the information into a category you might later use as a main point. Also, label

source card card used

to record bibliographic

information

annotate to summarize a

book or article’s contents on

a source card

information card card for

recording and categorizing

important data

Figure 7.1

source Cards Source

cards contain bibliographic

information. Annotated cards

also include a brief summary

of the material found in the

source.

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