Subject and Study Guides: Postgraduate Study: Reading and note making for PG study

Reading and note making

Reading is a key requirement of postgraduate study. This page is designed to help you make your reading time more productive.

	Reading and Note-making for a Postgraduate Assignment
	Bibliographic details Author/Year/ Title/Journal title/Book title/ Webpage title / City of publication / Publishing company / Web address / Volume / issue / page nos / etc.
	Main points of text Type of text Type of study Keywords Approach / theoretical basis Main findings Themes, issues Main conclusions
	Identifying connections and underlying patterns Links with other research Who else writes about this? Common threads Similarities Differences Distinctive features
	Your comments Comments - your response, reflections on your professional experience, etc Questions - what do you want to know more about? Which sources does the writer refer to that could be worth looking up?
	Evaluation Strength of the study overall Usefulness for your purpose weaknesses of the study overall Why not so revelation for your purpose

Click here for a useful list of questions to help you think critically about your reading.

Reading for assignments often involves two stages:

Skimming the key information quickly to check if the journal article, web article, or book is relevant to your needs. Here you can use the parts of the text: title, abstract (if there is one), introductory paragraphs, headings, and conclusion to see if the text is going to be useful for your purpose.
Focusing on particular relevant sections and reading them in depth – probably taking on notes on key points, noting page numbers and adding the reference to a list of references on Mendeley or Zotero.

Mindmeister
Mindmapping software available for purchase
Foxit PDF reader
Free software to help you make notes directly onto PDFs and save your notes