WRTG 105B Reasoning and Writing In the College (Schaefer): Reading & Note-taking

Strategies when taking notes:

• Summarize

Read the article, put it aside and write a few sentences about what you remember.

• Interrogate

Read the article and, any time an idea or question pops into your head, write it down near the quote that sparked the idea. See example below:

• BEAM

Read the article and, as you read, classify each phrase or paragraph according to BEAM. Is it background information? Write B besides the phrase. See example below:

 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License by Justina Elmore, University of Rochester.  Adapted from Kristin M. Woodward & Kate Ganski's "What Could A Writer Do With This Source?" {{cc-by-4.0}}

​Ask Yourself

• What are the terms and keyword the author is using?
• Do I need to do further research to understand these concepts? (e.g. look it up in Wikipedia)
• What is the main topic of the paper?
• What are the subtopics or subsections of the paper?
• Is the author successful in making their argument and/or is there further room for study?

Prezi link

For PC:

• Adobe Acrobat Reader DC
• PDFXchange

For Mac:

Preview (using Annotate tool)

Group Notetaking: 

• Google Docs
• Hypothesis
• Google Jamboard - especially for notetaking on images:

General:

Evernote

Learn more:

• Adobe Acrobat Pro Tutorial—Lesson 28—Sticky Notes, Comments and other Markups. (2020, January 19). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oT4deuGt2s
• How to draw on a PDF in Adobe Acrobat Reader. (2019, June 25). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_3N1foNosg&feature=youtu.be
• Three Ways to Print PDFs with Comments and Mark-Ups in Adobe Acrobat DC. (2017, March 17). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hRMQn6Z6JU&feature=youtu.be