Developing Note-Making Techniques as an Effective Factor to Better Learning Outcomes

Abstract

Making efficient notes is a vital skill required at many higher educational studies. However, graduate students, as being the focus of this study, need to be made aware of such a skill in order to prove their real qualifiers which enable them to cope with further higher studies or job requirements. This current study, then, aims at spotting light on the positive effects which various kinds of note-making bring to academic success. It tackles and searches mainly for the strong relationship that occurs between using different techniques to make own notes and the qualified recapitulation of the learned material(s), especially in exams. The undergone research depicts the way graduate students at the department of English at Mohamed Khider University of Biskra deal with the learned information, i. e. whether they just take it for granted and give it back to the teacher or they attempt to understand it, reformulate it in own words and style and try to find fruitful ways to reinforce it into memory. On the basis of the above arguments and purposes, this study concerns itself with confirming or rejecting the hypothesis that implementing various strategies of note-making will help in achieving higher and better learning outcomes. The entire research calls for a descriptive study looking for general methods of reviewing the notes through making notes. It also tries to depict the degree of adaptability of various note-making kinds among third year English students by means of a questionnaire administered to forty students, and an observation underwent with nine other students plus a test. Results obtained from the data gathering tools reveals for positive effects of adapting various kinds of making notes on students’ ability to retain information, and consequently on their learning outcomes as a desired goal. Therefore, the overall research strongly calls for learning the rudiments such a significant process not only to achieve higher grades but also to persist learning awareness and decision-making capabilities.