How to Write Better Essays

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13 Note-taking for analysis and structure

In this chapter you will learn:

• how to increase your flexibility in note-taking to make better use of
  all your intellectual abilities;


• how to choose the most appropriate strategy for the different levels
  at which we process ideas: comprehension, analysis and criticism;


• how to use linear notes to produce clear, uncluttered structures of
  the passages you read.

Choosing the right note-taking strategy

By now, no doubt, you will have realised that for each of these differ-

ent levels of processing (analysis/structure, and criticism/evaluation)

there is the most appropriate note-taking strategy.

Of course, this should come as no surprise. It endorses what we’ve

said a number of times already, that flexibility and choosing the most

appropriate strategy is the key to effective essay writing. For example,

we have already found in the interpretation stage that pattern notes are

the most effective strategy for generating and recording the flow of ideas,

when we brainstorm a question. And the same is true here: pattern and

linear notes are each appropriate for different types of processing.

Nevertheless, there will always be a text or an article which we’re

using that seems to fall between two strategies, neither of which alone

seems to do the job we want to do. On these occasions I find myself

taking the highly structured linear notes first, and then creating a set

of pattern notes to give me a broad overview of the issues involved. In

this way you can get around the problem of seeing nothing but detail;

of not being able to see the wood for the trees.

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