How to take notes from a textbook (without copying it out)

To take notes from a textbook, read a whole section before you write anything, then close the book and write the main ideas in your own words as questions and short answers, and only then open it again to check and fill gaps. Notes made this way are short, and making them is already a test. Copying sentences as you read is slower and gives you a second copy of the textbook that you still have to learn. This guide covers why copying fails, a six-step method, what to do with diagrams and worked examples, a worked example on one chapter, how to turn the notes into revision, and how to do it with a PDF textbook on a board.

Why copying from the textbook does not work

Textbook prose is already dense. When you take notes as you read, sentence by sentence, two things happen. You copy, because every sentence looks important, and you stop reading for meaning, because your attention is on the pen. The result is ten pages of notes per chapter, and the work of learning them has not started.

Dunlosky and colleagues' review of study techniques rated highlighting, summarising and rereading as low-utility [1]. All three let you move through the text without having to recall anything. Line-by-line notes are highlighting by hand. What works better is to make the notes after a delay, from memory, so that writing them requires you to recall and reorganise the material.

Before you open the chapter

• Find out what you need from it. Check the syllabus, the lecture slides or the learning objectives. If the lecture covered three of the chapter's six sections, those three get full notes and the rest get a skim.
• Skim the structure. Headings, bold terms, figures and the end-of-chapter questions. Two minutes of this gives you the outline your notes will hang on.
• Turn the headings into questions. "Glycolysis" becomes "What does glycolysis do, and what does it produce?" You now have something to read for. This is the Survey and Question part of the old SQ3R method, and it is the part worth keeping.

How to take notes from a textbook in six steps

1. Read one section without writingOne heading's worth, usually two to five pages. Read to answer your question. Work through each worked example with a pencil. If a paragraph makes no sense, reread it now; you cannot take good notes on something you have not understood.
2. Close the book and write from memoryAnswer your question for that section in your own words: the main idea in a sentence or two, the key terms with definitions, the cause-and-effect, the one example. Draw the diagram if there is one. Keep it short. If you cannot remember something, leave a gap with a question mark.
3. Open the book and fill the gapsCheck your notes against the section. Correct mistakes and fill the question marks in a different colour. Those coloured parts are what you did not get on the first read, and they are what to revise first.
4. Write each idea as a question and an answerSplit the page: questions on the left, short answers on the right, the way Cornell notes do it. "What limits the rate of glycolysis?" on the left, the answer on the right. You can now cover the right side and test yourself.
5. Add the page numberEvery note gets the page it came from. When you get a question wrong in two weeks, you go straight to the page instead of searching the chapter.
6. Summarise the chapter on one pageAt the end of the chapter, without looking at your notes, write a one-page map of how the sections connect. Then check it. This is the page you will reread before the exam.

It feels slower than copying. In practice it is usually faster, because the notes are a third of the length and you will not need to reread the chapter later.

A worked example: one chapter

Say it is a 30-page biology chapter on cellular respiration, with five sections and the lecture covering four of them.

About three hours for the chapter, and you leave with twenty self-test questions and a map. Reading the chapter twice and highlighting it would take about as long and leave you with neither.

Diagrams, tables and worked examples

• Diagrams: redraw them from memory, then compare. Copying a diagram neatly teaches you little; redrawing it badly from memory and fixing it teaches you the diagram.
• Tables: do not copy them. Write the question the table answers ("which hormones raise blood glucose?") and come back to the table to check.
• Worked examples: cover the solution and try the problem yourself first. Note only the step you got stuck on and why it works. That step is what you need to remember.

What is the best way to study from a textbook?

Make the notes once, then spend your study time testing yourself on them rather than rereading them. The question column is your first test: cover the answers and go down the list. Practice testing is one of the two techniques the Dunlosky review rated most useful; the other is spacing, which means coming back to the same questions after a few days and again after a week or two [1]. There is more on both in the active recall study method and how far apart to space reviews.

Should you write by hand or type? Mueller and Oppenheimer found that students who took lecture notes by hand did better on conceptual questions than students who typed, because typists tended to copy word for word [2]. A replication by Morehead, Dunlosky and Rawson found the differences were smaller and less consistent than first reported [3]. For textbook notes written from memory, the copying problem does not arise, so use whichever is faster for you.

Taking notes from a PDF textbook on a board

If your textbook is a PDF, the method stays the same. A board makes steps three and five quicker, because the source and your notes sit side by side.

In Bord, add the chapter PDF to a board as a source. That needs a free account: Free takes files up to 100 pages and 50 MB, with three files per board, so add a chapter rather than the whole book; Plus takes 500 pages and 250 MB. Open the file in the preview beside the board to read, then close it and write your notes from memory in the notebook. Link any note to a page of the PDF, and clicking it later opens the preview at that page. Bord also finds the figures in the file, and when Ask or Tutor uses one it places the original on the board with its caption, so you can set it beside the diagram you redrew.

When you get to testing, ask Quizbook for a quiz on the chapter. It writes questions from your file, marks your answers, and links each miss to the page it came from. If a section did not make sense on the first read, ask Ask or Tutor to explain it from the chapter, then close it and write your own notes. Reading an explanation is input; the notes you write afterwards are where you learn it. The same routine for slides is in how to study from lecture slides.

Questions