A Note-taking System Deciding how to organize your notes and review them later is vital if you want to get the most from your lectures and reading. I’ve been using the Cornell system since my second year and I’ve found it really effective. The Cornell system is designed to be very time-efficient as it avoids redrafting and helps with recall. It is currently one of the most popular note-taking systems at universities throughout the USA. Before the lecture/reading You should use a large loose-leaf folder and only use one side of the paper- this is so you can lay out your notes to get an overview of the subject. You should draw a margin about 6 centimetres from the left edge of the paper. The area to the right of this margin is used for taking notes during the lecture or reading. The area to the left will be used later to aid recall. During the lecture/reading You should try and take down as much information as you can (remember to use the right-hand side of the page). Obviously you can’t write down every word, so stick to the main points. Don’t worry about writing grammatical sentences; you can leave out unnecessary words and just use key words, but write legibly. Use abbreviations if you can. Leave blank lines to show the end of an idea. After the lecture/reading First, to make sure your notes make sense later, read through them and fill in any missing information: complete any unfinished sentences and fill in any blanks etc. When you’ve done that, it’s time to move on to the recall column to the left of the margin. In this, you should jot down key words to help you remember your notes. Alternatively you can write a question. To do this you will have to reflect on what the lecturer said and reduce it down to the bare minimum. Once you’ve done this you can cover up the right-hand side of the page (or fold it over), and recite the main ideas from the lecture. It’s important to actually speak out loud as this will help recall later. You then uncover the right hand part, and see how well you did. If you repeat this review process at regular intervals - the day after the lecture, then in a week and then about a month later - the information should go into your long-term memory and you’ll avoid the need to do lots of last-minute revision. Well, that’s the Cornell system. There are others of course, but this one has worked for me so why not give it a try and see what you think! According to the text, decide if the statements are true or false. Complete these definitions by typing a word or expression from the text. The paragraph number is given. | 
