The Outlining Method

Yes, our old favorite, the faithful Outlining Method. It's simple, it's effective, and it's both tried and tested. I personally do hold by this method, it's neat and easy. I bullet points in different bullets to make it more interesting, by the way. It's a lot of fun.

So this is how we do it:

- Begin by taking a sheet of paper.

- Write the MAIN point on the extreme left. As we move on, we start indenting the sub-points, and the sub-sub-points, and the sub-sub-sub points. (And we can go on and on with the subs, but really, what's the point?)

- Usually un-numbered, and uses "dashes" to connect information

- For eg. [Let's take the agriculture example of yesterday]

- Agriculture

- Sowing
- Broadcasting
- Method of throwing seeds at random
- No regular intervals
- Some seeds may be wasted

- Dibbling
- Method of making holes in the ground, and putting seeds
- Regular intervals
- Manuring
- Blah and Blah
- More blahs
- Didn't feel like writing it

Edit: Oops, blogger won't let me give an example. But if you want one, just google "outlining method of notetaking" and I'm sure you'll get an example...

Des says: I find this method great, very neat and organized, but a little more time-consuming than say, the Cornell Method. It works great in lectures, but you might find it hard to use in a class like maths. Many people have different "tweaks" of the method, and it's good to improvise, so go ahead and try!