NOTE MAKING

One of the most valuable skills you need to develop at college is the ability to make notes
effectively. Good skills in taking and making notes will help you, as an active learner, to
organise, categorise and recall information you can use when completing assignments or
revising for exams. You can experiment with different strategies to find those which best suit
your purpose and learning style.

Effective note makers are efficient learners. Effective note making is a skill that each person
develops over time and with practice to suit their own style of working. You will find some
ideas to help you start on this path in this section.

Effective note makers:

 can recognise the main ideas

 know which information is relevant to their purpose
 have developed a system that works for them
 can keep it brief and may also use visual diagrams/mind maps
 mostly use their own words (as well as specialist words)
 record details of the source (bibliographic information such as author, date etc.)

How to make notes?

 Read the passage carefully.

 Frame a heading based on the central idea and write it in the middle of the page. Keep
the heading short, crisp and interesting (no more than 3-4 words)
 How has the main idea been presented and developed? Are there two or three
subordinate/associated ideas? You can frame subheadings based on these.
 What details or points of the subtitles do you wish to keep in these notes? Indent, i.e.,
suitably space and number.
All subheadings should be written at a uniform distance from the margin.
 All points should also maintain the same distance away from the sub heading.
Note: Do not write full sentences. Use abbreviations wherever necessary.

Help with abbreviations

 Use standard abbreviations and symbols as far as possible:

 Capitalized first letters of words
 e.g. U.P.,U.S.A.,U.K.,U.S.S.R.,etc.
 Common abbreviations

e.g., : \, ∴ , +ve, -ve, ↑ (rising), ↓ (falling), =, etc.

Sc. (for science), Mr., Mrs., Dr., Govt., etc
 Common symbols
 Measurements and Figures
e.g., : 100′, 100”, 100 kg, 1000 mm, 100ml, etc.
 1. Making your own abbreviations:
Keep the main sounds of the word. For example, edn. (education), progm.
(programme)

Retain the suffix so that later when you are going over the notes you may recall the
full form of the word —e.g., ed’nal (educational), prog’ve (progressive).

2. Do not get over-enthusiastic about abbreviations. You should not abbreviate every
word. As a general rule, the heading should not be abbreviated. You may use
abbreviations in subheadings.

Sample 1

Read the following passage and make notes on it, in points only, using headings and
sub-headings. Also use recognizable abbreviations, wherever necessary. Supply an
appropriate title to it.

Occasional self-medication has always been part of normal living. The making and selling of
drugs has a long history and is closely linked, like medical practice itself, with belief in
magic. Only during the last hundred years or so, as the development of scientific techniques
made it possible diagnosis has become possible. The doctor is now able to follow up the
correct diagnosis of many illnesses-with specific treatment of their causes. In many other
illnesses of which the causes remain unknown, he is still limited, like the unqualified
prescriber, to the treatment of symptoms. The doctor is trained to decide when to treat
symptoms only and when to attack the cause. This is the essential difference between medical
prescribing and self-medication.

The advance of technology has brought about much progress in some fields of medicine,
including the development of scientific drug therapy. In many countries public health
organization is improving and people’s nutritional standards have risen. Parallel with such
beneficial trends are two which have an adverse effect. One is the use of high pressure
advertising by the pharmaceutical industry which has tended to influence both patients and
doctors and has led to the overuse of drugs generally. The other is emergence of eating,
insufficient sleep, excessive smoking and drinking. People with disorders arising from faulty
habits such as these, as well as well from unhappy human relationships, often resort to self –
medication and so add the taking of pharmaceuticals to the list. Advertisers go to great
lengths to catch this market.

Clever advertising, aimed at chronic suffers who will try anything because doctors have not
been able to cure them, can induce such faith in a preparation, particularly if steeply priced,
that it will produce-by suggestion-a very real effect in some people. Advertisements are also
aimed at people suffering from mild complaints such as simple cold and coughs which clear
up by themselves within a short time.
These are the main reasons, why laxatives, indigestion-remedies, painkillers, cough-mixtures,
tonics, vitamin and iron tablets, nose drops, ointments and many other preparations are found
in quantity in many households. It is doubtful whether taking these things ever improves a
person’s health, it may even make it worse. Worse, because the preparation may contain
unsuitable ingredients; worse because the taker may become dependent on them; worse
because they might be taken excess; worse because they may cause poisoning, and worst of
all because symptoms of some serious underlying cause may be asked and therefore medical
help may not be sought. Self-diagnosis is a greater danger than self-medication.

Self-Medication

1. Self-Medication – changes over the years

1. 1 Self-mdn
1.2. part of normal living—last 100 yrs

1.3. Advance in diagtech..

1.4. self-mdn differs -medical prescription

2. Technological Advmnt in medicine

2.1. drug therapy

2.2. impt. - public. health orgs

2.3. increase in nutril standards.

3. Clever advertising by pharmal companies

3.1. take advantage of people’s need

3.2. chronic suffers

3.3. mild complaints like cold and coughs

3.4. Faulty life style

3.5. Lack of exercise, over eating, insufficient sleep etc.

3.6. stress, unhappy rlshps etc.

4. dangers of self – mdn

4.1. dependence

4.2. consume medicine - excess

4.3. Prepns may cause poisng

 4.4. Real cause of illness gets suppressed or untreated.

ABBREVIATIONS

mdn - medication
yrs – years
diag tech-diagnosis technology
impt – important
nutril -nutritional
pharmal –pharmaceutical
rlshps – relationships
Prepn – preparation
Poisng - poisoning

Sample -2

Read the following passage and make notes on it, in points only, using headings and
sub-headings. Also use recognizable abbreviations, wherever necessary. Supply an
appropriate title to it.

Almost all of us have suffered from a headache at some time or the other. For some a
headache is a constant companion and life is a painful hell of wasted time.

The most important step to cope with headaches is to identify the type of headache one is
suffering from. In tension headaches (two hand headache), a feeling of a tight band around
the head exits along with the pain in the neck and shoulders. It usually follows activities such
as long stretches driving, typing or sitting on the desks. They are usually short lived but can
also last for days or weeks.

A headache is usually caused due to the spinal misalignment of the head, due to the posture.
Sleeping on the stomach with the head turn to one side and bending over positions for a long
time make it worse.

In migraine headaches, the pains usually on one side of the head may be accompanied by
nausea, vomiting irritability and bright spots of flashes of light. This headache is meant worse
by activities especially bending. The throbbing pain in the head worsens by noise and light.
Certain triggers for migraines may be chocolate, caffeine, smoking or MSU in certain food
items. The pain may last eight to twenty-four hours and there may be a hangover for two or
three days. Migraines are often produced by an ‘aura’------changes in sight and sensation.
There is usually a family migraine.

In a headache, pain originates from the brain but from the irritated nerves of muscles, blood
vessels and bones. These head pain signals to the brain which judges the degree of distress
and relays it at appropriate sites. The pain sometimes may be referred to sights other than the
problem areas. This is known as referred by pain and occurs due to sensation overload. Thus,
though, most headache states at the base of the skull referred pain as felt typically behind the
eyes.

Factors causing headache are understood but it is known that a shift in the level of body
hormones chemicals, certain foods and drinks and environmental stress can trigger them.

If the headache troubles you often, visit the doctor, who will take a full health history relating
to diet, life stresses, the type of headache, trigging factors and relief measures. You may be
asked to keep a ‘headache diary’ which tells you to list – the time headache started and when
it ended, emotional environmental and food and drinking factors which may contribute to it.
The type and severity of pain and the medications used which provide much relief are also to
be listed.

This helps the doctor in determining the exact cause and type of headache and the remedy
thereof.

Headaches and their Treatments

1. Identification: -

1.1. tension hdace

1.2. migrn hdace

2. Symptoms: -

2.1. Tension hdaces

2.2. feeling tight band around head

2.3. pain in neck and shoulders

2.4. migrnhdaces

2.5. pain on one side of the head

2.6. vomiting and irritability

2.7. bright sport of flashes of light

3. Causes: -

3.1. Tension hdaces

3.2. long stretches of driving

3.3. long hrs. of typing or sitting on the desk

3.4. migrnhdace
 3.5. Chocolate, coffee, smoking

4. Treatment: -

4.1. Self –care technqes for shorter period.

4.2. Dr. advice for permanent treatments.

Abbreviations

1. hrs-hours

2. Dr. – Doctor

3. migrn –migraine

3. Hdace – headache

4. technqes - techniques

PASSAGES FOR NOTE MAKING

Passage 1

In a very short period of time the internet has had a profound impact on the way we live.
Since the Internet was made operational in 1983, it has lowered both the costs of
communication and the barriers to creative expression. It has challenged old business models
and enabled new ones. It has provided access to information on a scale never before
achievable.

It succeeded because we designed it to be flexible and open. These two features have allowed
it to accommodate innovation without massive changes to its infrastructure. An open,
borderless and standardized platform means that barriers to entry are low, competition is
high, interoperability is assured and innovation is rapid.

The beauty of an open platform is that there are no gatekeepers. For centuries, access to and
creation of information was controlled by the few. The internet has changed that --and is
rapidly becoming the platform for everyone, by everyone.

Of course, it still has a way to go. Today there are only about 2.3 billion internet users,
representing roughly 30% of the world's population. Much of the information that they can
access online is in English, but this is changing rapidly. The technological progress of the
internet has also set social change in motion. As with other enabling inventions before it,
from the telegraph to television, some will worry about the effects of broader access to
information -- the printing press and the rise in literacy that it effected were, after all, long
seen as destabilizing. Similar concerns about the internet are occasionally raised, but if we
take a long view, I’m confident that its benefits far outweigh the discomforts of learning to
integrate it into our lives. The internet and the world wide web are what they are because
literally millions of people have made it so. It is a grand collaboration.

It would be foolish not to acknowledge that the openness of the internet has had a price.
Security is an increasingly important issue and cannot be ignored. If there is an area of vital
research and development for the internet, this is one of them. I am increasingly confident,
however, that techniques and practices exist to make the internet safer and more secure while
retaining its essentially open quality.

After working on the internet and its predecessors for over four decades, I'm more optimistic
about its promise than I have ever been. We are all free to innovate on the net every day. The
internet is a tool of the people, built by the people for the people and it must stay that way.

(a) On the basis of your reading of the above passage make notes on it using recognizable
abbreviations (minimum four) wherever necessary. Use a format you consider appropriate.
Supply a suitable title.

Passage 2

The word procrastination comes from two Latin terms meaning to put forward until
tomorrow. Standard dictionary definitions all include the idea of postponement or delay.
Steel, a psychologist who has reviewed hundreds of studies on the subject, states that to
procrastinate is “to voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be
worse-off for the delay”.

Another expert, Dr. Joseph R. Ferrari (2005), distinguishes between people who tend to put
things off and “chronic” or “real” procrastinators for whom this is their life and who might
even need therapy. Ferrari categorizes procrastinators into three types: (a) stimulation types
that get a thrill from beating a deadline, (b) avoiders put off doing things that might make
others think badly of them, and (c) decisional procrastinators postpone making a decision
until they have enough information to avoid making a wrong choice.

Chronic procrastinators tend to have low self-esteem and focus on the past more than the
future. The Discounted Expectancy Theory illustrates with a student like Sam who puts off
writing a paper. When the deadline is far off, the rewards for socializing now are greater than
those for finishing a task not due until later. As the deadline looms, the rewards or
consequences for finishing the paper become more important.

Passage 3

The small village of Somnathpur contains an extraordinary temple, built around 1268 A.D. by
the Hoyasalas of Karnataka – one of the most prolific temple builders. Belur and Halebid are
among their better-known works. While these suffered during the invasion of the 14th
century, the Somnathpur temple stands more or less intact in near-original condition. The
small temple captivates with the beauty and vitality of its detailed sculpture, covering almost
every inch of the walls, pillars and even ceilings. It has three shikaras and stands on a star-
shaped raised platform with 24 edges. The outer walls have a profusion of detailed carvings:
the entire surface run over by carved plaques of stone. There were vertical panels covered by
exquisite figures of God and Goddesses, with many incarnations being depicted. There were
nymphs too, some carrying an ear of maize, a symbol of plenty and prosperity. The elaborate
ornamentation, very characteristic of Hoyasala sculptures was a remarkable feature. On
closer look – and it is worth it – the series of friezes on the outer walls revealed intricately
carved caparisoned elephants, charging horsemen, stylized flowers, warriors, musicians,
crocodiles and swans.

The temple was actually commissioned by Soma Dandanayaka or Somnath (he named the
village after himself), the minister of the Hoyasala king, Narasimha the Third. The temple
was built to house three versions of Krishna – Venugopala, Janardana and PrasannaKeshava,
though only two remain in their original form. In the darkness of the sanctum sanctorum, I
tried to discern the different images. The temple’s sculptural perfection is amazing and
includes the doors of the temple and the three elegantly carved towers.