#chemistry a-level

Don’t just copy the textbook onto paper!

You’ve probably heard this from your teachers before, and it sounds stupid because isn’t that the whole POINT of taking notes? Well, no. Not exactly.

It’s proven that you remember things more effectively when you write them in your own words. Which makes sense, because your brain thinks in its own unique, funny way, and this is incomparable to the way anybody else's brain thinks. Including the fancy-pants professor who wrote your textbook. Whilst there are some key terms that you may have to quote the specific language for if you refer to them in a formal context such as a test or exam, large pieces of text can often be translated and simplified in a manner that allows you to take it in more efficiently. This is a very useful way to take notes, as it makes them more quotable to yourself later on when you’re trying to study a given topic.

Personally, my own notes are a combination of immediate references to the textbook- as with key terms it’s often useful to learn these how they are given to you- and my own wording of the rest of that chapter. I find this to be an effective way to memorise and improve my understanding of a topic.

Find out what your brain enjoys!

There are millions of different ways that people like to learn. You may have heard about different sub-types, such auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learning. While you may assume that you can only take things down in words, there are actually a lot of different and interesting methods people enjoy using to make notes and to study them! Here are a couple to try:

Visual learning: This one probably isn’t a total revelation that has shaken you to the core, but people often skim past the pictures in the textbook and opt to just take down the textual content. However, taking time to google and draw out a summary diagram for the carbon cycle, or the organic mechanism for dehydration of ethanol might just prove to be a more effective way to help you remember it!

Auditory learning: If your ears and ability to recall the spoken word prove to be your strongest asset, you might find that listening and logging the information is a much easier way to digest it. There are looooads of YouTube channels that offer short summary videos on almost anything you could possibly imagine- I will link the page of my favourite study vloggers HERE for you to peruse. Additionally, talking openly and discussing the subject either with another person in a conversation, or by yourself with your phone to record and listen to later, could also help. Somebody once told me about how they recorded their summary notes and fell asleep with headphones in, listening to them on repeat at night. Each to his own, I guess, albeit that one is a little bit creepy. Aldous Huxley is turning in his grave.

A combination of both, and many other things: I find that I personally enjoy a lot of different ways of taking in information, so I use a lot of different methods to ensure that my brain is well-stimulated and taking in the information as best as it can. Reading the textbook, copying useful fragments of text down, discussing the topic with my friends, drawing up summary posters, amongst other things are all techniques that I find useful when I take notes. Often it is best to use a couple of different methods, especially those that replicate what you’ll need to do and the skills you will need to have for your exams.

Highlighting!

There has been a real trend recently regarding making your notes look pretty and colourful by using highlighters. And yes, I’ve jumped onto that bandwagon myself, and through doing so I’ve actually discovered a few very important things to consider when you highlight your notes.

Firstly, don’t highlight the entire page, Nancy... What’s the point in highlighting the ‘important’ bits in the first place if you’re just going to colour the whole block of text with your pastel pink Stabilo marker? Pick out the REAL important parts- the key terms your teacher has told you to remember, the explanations that you’ve been struggling to recall. Highlighting should allow you to look at the page and for your eyes to be instantly drawn to the stand-out pieces of information. So make sure that you make future-you’s job as simple as possible when they look back to the notes you’re making to revise for that upcoming exam.

On a less negative note, another thing to play around with is to use a colour-coordination system so that each different TYPE of information has a different colour to help you pick out the most important bits. I find this to be particularly helpful in subjects where you need to annotate something- for me, this is my Music A-Level. I use different coloured pens and highlighters for different types of points- e.g. green for melody, orange for rhythm/metre, purple for harmony/tonality. This means that when you go back to pick out essay points, you can skim the page for the according colour to what it is you want to write about. It’s very handy.

Read outside your textbooks!

Don’t think that you’re limited to just the information your teacher and textbook supply you with. Your notes should be a collection of cohesive and understandable explanations of the content you learn- and a good way to improve your understanding of what you’re studying is to explore the interpretations given in other textbooks, journals, and written works. They are easily accessible online (not that I’m trying to promote PIRACY or anything... but you can usually find a dodgy PDF somewhere if you dig around) or even in your school/local library. Alternative sources are a great way of building up different perspectives to put in answer banks for any essay subjects, or for exploring different explanations of any scientific content you may be learning in STEM subjects.

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