Note Taking and Essay Writing

This chapter concentrates on the relationship between the quality of note taking during writing and subsequent outcomes — as measured by the content and quality of essay-type answers. During their research project the authors studied the notes of more than 1200 students in order to answer the questions: What kinds of note taking activities are related to sensible and well-written answers in a difficult examination? How note taking can serve more effectively writing as a learning tool? The results demonstrated that writing summary notes has an effect on both learning the content knowledge and on the linguistic features of the resulting essays. Yet, several procedural aspects of writing play crucial roles in the learning process. Spontaneous note taking affects learning and writing operations utilising distinct types of mental representations. This depends on the type of notes taken, the nature of the writing tasks, and the writing conditions — such as notes-present or notes-absent. Overall, these results raise the need to pay more attention to the ability to write notes in one’s own words, argue purposefully and to monitor the coherence and accuracy of meaning. These skills are especially important in learning by writing.