How to Take Research Notes

Series Summary

Good writing is an important skill that can be used in a variety of media. Whether it's writing a meeting agenda, a toast or a magazine article, the ability to effectively communicate to a large audience stems from knowledge and execution of proper writing techniques. With such knowledge comes an understanding of the distinct differences in writing styles between creative writing, journalism, technical writing and informal writing. In this free video series, a produced playwright provides tips for writing research papers, romance novels and other writing advice as well. Discover how to take research notes, how to format a research paper and how to choose a topic for a senior thesis. Become a better romance writer by establishing a writing schedule, developing a romantic hero and establishing romantic tension in a novel. With this advice on writing, research and literature, anyone's writing skills will instantly improve.

Video Transcript

"Hi this is Laura Turner and today I'm going to talk to you about taking research notes. A research paper can be a pretty daunting task, but the most important thing for you to do is to take as many notes as possible so that you can get as much out of your work as you need to get. So what you are going to do is you are going to go ahead and pick your topic first. And once you've gotten that nailed down what you need to do is you actually need to start taking your own notes on what interests you about that topic. Don't just stick with the questions that you are going to be writing on, maybe even branch out into the world of your topic. So for example if you are writing about Macbeth, for a research paper, Shakespeare's Macbeth, you can sort of ask yourself questions like what was going on in the world of Shakespeare's time when he was writing his play. And then you can delve into finding sources that will help you to expand your paper and really turn it into something that is bigger then just the topic that you've chosen. So my suggestion to you is to write down as many questions that interest you about your topic as possible and then go to the library or get online and find as many articles and books as you can possibly get your hands on and take down the quotations from these books. And even write down the information of the books for later use. So you'll have more then enough information to write your paper."