Effective note-taking can help you to make sense of the material you’re reading, to focus on key themes and concepts, and to further develop the ideas and arguments that will form the basis of your paper.
There is no one right way to take notes, as they are for your own personal use. It might help to take different types of notes for different purposes and at different stages of the writing process.
Your notes can serve as a way of:
1. gathering key information and ideas from your readings
2. organizing, summarizing and synthesizing ideas
3. visually outlining, mapping and connecting readings and ideas to your topic and main arguments