How to make English notes to analyse a text? (1 Viewer)

[swagmeister]

So now comes the point where I have found a bit of motivation and I am about to get serious with English. Any advice for making notes? Currently I'm thinking that for each text I will do:

• background/context as well as purpose and form/medium
• relation to unit e.g. people, power and politics would be the political views in the text etc.
• themes/ideas based each aspect of the syllabus and quotes as well as their techniques for each theme
• characters including an analysis and key quotes for each
• thesis and paragraph bank based on themes
• notes as I go through the whole text on events, writing style, quotes/techniques, character's feelings etc. that I will later categorise

And for the related text similar except identifying similarities and differences between the texts in relation to ideas as well.

Not sure if this is how I should be taking notes for English? I didn't take any note in prelim but I think it would help me. Any thoughts?

 

[mreditor16]

I actually support the notion of making notes. What I did is I made one document per text I did, and all my info, quotes, analysis would be in that one document. After I read and highlight any reading on the text, the useful info would go straight into said document.

I split it into:

* The Author/Director and their Influence
* Context and its Links to the Text
* Genre, Style and Structure
* Analysis of Major Characters (sub-dividing it into a section on each character)
* Analysis of Major Themes (sub-dividing it into a section on each theme)
* Miscellaneous Analysis
* Quotes from Critics and Readings

Also, note that quotes and techniques from the text would be inherent in all sections, so I had no section just for quotes from the text, which many people do. The reason why is that in my opinion, it is good to keep quotes and analysis and techniques all together, because that is what you have to do in your essays!

The reason I did this is that this became my one-stop shop for any of my enquiries regarding that text - whether it'd be doing some HW on the text or trying to find a better critic quote for draft 4 of my essay, it was just as easy as opening up that document and looking through for what I wanted. This became extremely useful towards the final exams, because when I was constantly refining my essays, I kept on coming back to said document to find what I wanted.

At the end of the day, it just saved so much time, having all my resources in one central location, and hence its a method I highly highly recommend!! The time you spend on making this document over time definitely is less than the time you will waste on looking through several different resources trying to find that critic quote you wanted to include or finding that snippet of analysis you wrote down on some reading you highlighted. In my opinion, the method I suggested makes your English studies highly efficient.