Guide to Rapid Revisions ...

Key word notes help students in rapid revisions and enable them to take down maximum points during lectures. They are easy to make and can be made for almost every subject and topic. But being careful while making these key word notes is essential so as to ensure that you make notes that you understand quickly later and find easy to assimilate. Here are 5 essential tips to help you make useful key word notes:

1. Use words that summarize the text well
Words important to a definition or a concept must be retained. Words that can trigger an entire paragraph and can lead to detailing of sections are the ones you should use for your notes. For example, if you are studying the French Revolution, your key notes should include Mary Antoinette, 1789-1799, rising bourgeoisie, aggrieved peasants and urban wage-earners, famine and malnutrition, dictatorship, bread and cakes, etc.

2. Don’t choose words you don’t use often
New words can be difficult to remember so avoid using them for your key word notes. Use words you are more likely to remember. You can even use words that may mean something else but trigger relevant thoughts in your head. For example, coffee may remind you of a specific bird and its chirp in the morning and black board may remind you of a particular mathematical equation. So don’t hesitate from forming your own unique key word notes based on your individualistic associations.

3. Create your own abbreviations
Memory cannot hold all data, so it’s important to use tools to remember loads of specifics. Abbreviating difficult but important phrases, equations, formulas, etc. can work wonderfully. You can twist a current abbreviation to mean something else. You can even abbreviate an entire definition in about 5 key words by just using the beginning alphabets of each.

4. Use different colored pens to segregate matter
Take advantage of a human being’s tendency to remember snapshots of pages. While making notes, use different colored pens so that those facts written in green, red, blue etc. get etched in your mind as it is. As a result, you may forget a certain definition but remembering that it was written in the top most section of the page in red may trigger a certain word, which could remind you of the whole definition.

5. Use arrows, plus, minus signs and other symbols to communicate
It’s important to make your key word notes short so that you can remember a whole chapter in about a page or even a paragraph. Using symbols such as plus, minus, multiplication, alpha, circles, squares, arrows etc., help in making your notes short and crisp. This also makes it visually easier to understand your notes and quicker to remember.

The idea is to transform your study notes into small stories using these tricks so that revisions are quicker and more effective. Get cracking with those complicated chapters and see the magic key word notes can spin. All the best!