Do you take notes?

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kelvin921019
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Re: Do you take notes?

Postby kelvin921019 » Fri Jul 02, 2021 12:08 pm

My approach is to read the textbook, understand what the text / note is talking about, write them in my notebook in my own words. This is to ensure that I'm really reading the text but not just flicking through it.
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Iversen
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Re: Do you take notes?

Postby Iversen » Sat Jul 03, 2021 6:45 pm

When I study a text in order to learn a language this implicates that I also copy it (by hand), and I reserve a margin for new words and ultra short expressions. I may write a short comment if there is some interesting construction in the text, but apart from that I rarely take notes - and since I throw them away at some later point those notes don't survive for long. My study texts are generally short, so if I read something very looooooooooooooooooooooong then it is mostly for fun and I don't take notes at all.

On the other hand, when I study grammar I do take notes, but once I have condensed those notes into a green sheet I throw the preliminary notes away - otherwise I would drown in the resulting paper mountains.

When I surf on the internet I keep a folded sheet under the keyboard (I use an oldfashioned tower PC) and there I jot random things down, mostly about the content or links or article or author names and things like that, but almost never linguistic tidbits - I prefer studying language in a more systematic fashion and have the means to do so. However when all four faces of the folded sheet have been scribbled full I throw it away, and unless I then already have followed up on the references in the meantime the information just ends up unused in the dustbin. To console myself in view of this grievous loss I keep telling myself that the writing process itself is the important thing.

If I study a language with few resources (dictionaries, grammars) then I definitely don't try to fill the void. The fewer resources, the bigger the void. If the resources aren't sufficient then so be it..
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Re: Do you take notes?

Postby lingzz_langzz » Mon Jul 05, 2021 7:27 am

Caromarlyse wrote:I do create sheets of questions and answers, so I can go through and test myself repeatedly on things I am struggling with - this mainly is grammar, but of course it helps to solidify whatever vocabulary is tied up in the exercises. I suppose the modern way is to do this on a flashcard app, but I much prefer paper. The sheet I use to write out the answers gets thrown away/recycled each time.


This is a really interesting approach! Could you give an example of such a list? Do you think it could work to just reinforce the vocabulary?

Iversen wrote:On the other hand, when I study grammar I do take notes, but once I have condensed those notes into a green sheet I throw the preliminary notes away - otherwise I would drown in the resulting paper mountains.


Someone already mentioned those green sheets and I'm wondering where I could find them. Could you help? :)
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Caromarlyse
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Re: Do you take notes?

Postby Caromarlyse » Mon Jul 05, 2021 2:02 pm

lingzz_langzz wrote:
Caromarlyse wrote:I do create sheets of questions and answers, so I can go through and test myself repeatedly on things I am struggling with - this mainly is grammar, but of course it helps to solidify whatever vocabulary is tied up in the exercises. I suppose the modern way is to do this on a flashcard app, but I much prefer paper. The sheet I use to write out the answers gets thrown away/recycled each time.
This is a really interesting approach! Could you give an example of such a list? Do you think it could work to just reinforce the vocabulary?


I write questions on one piece of paper (in one colour), then the answers on another piece of paper (in another colour), then test myself by writing out the answers on a third. Then I go back and correct. Each time I notice something new or get something wrong repeatedly etc, I annotate the answer sheet, so that next time I test myself, I see my thoughts again. Personally I'm not much good at learning vocab from lists, but I suppose you could create cloze exercises for yourself in this way. As I said, it's pretty old school, but the process of handwriting and being able to use colour and annotate all over the piece of paper really helps my memory, as does the repetition, of course. On that, I also appreciate being in control of when to revise, rather than having an algorithm "motivating" me to do so!
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Re: Do you take notes?

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Mon Jul 05, 2021 5:14 pm

lingzz_langzz wrote:Someone already mentioned those green sheets and I'm wondering where I could find them. Could you help? :)


Here you are:
3.3. Green sheets
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Re: Do you take notes?

Postby antstronaut » Wed Jul 07, 2021 3:11 am

Depends on what one considers "notes". Usually I keep a cheap notebook, not more than a 2 or 3 euros/dollars, and I can essentially do whatever in it. Whether that is watching youtube videos and then writing down a few phrases here and there to keep me engaged. I find that writing things down helps, not necessarily with the goal to take notes
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Re: Do you take notes?

Postby Sonjaconjota » Fri Jul 09, 2021 8:10 pm

I like writing by hand, and the slow process of taking nice-looking notes helps me to distil and process new information.
It is true though that I do not go back to consult those notes very often.
I also do some practising through writing by copying and translating sentences. Those papers I throw away immediately.

Edit:
I just remembered this video with the curious advice to take notes on a Magna Doodle, if you know exactly that you won't look at them again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6Ft4geuXgs
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