Pen And Paper

You hear a lot these days about being “paperless”. Yes, it’s better for the environment not to have paper copies of absolutely everything, but paper still has its uses.

Take assignment writing. Assignments usually have to be submitted either electronically or as word processed printouts. It is unlikely your tutors will ever see your handwriting as few courses require handwritten material to be handed in. But this doesn’t mean you can retire your pen completely. American study skills writer Cal Newport has written about the virtues of using pen and paper to help you think about your work and plan.

His take on pen and paper is that it frees you from distractions. Most computers come with wireless internet access so you are never more than a couple of clicks away from wasting valuable time on Facebook, online games, or any of the millions of distractions you can find online. But with a pen and paper these distractions are inaccessible. For Newport the act of using a pen and paper to write about your ideas can be more easily combined with getting away from the usual routine – without needing a power source for your computer (even the best laptop batteries will die after a few hours) you have the freedom to go somewhere which you might find suits you better than the library or your own bedroom. Whilst Newport’s suggestion of “the dunes overlooking a windswept springtime beach” might be a little hard to find in Salford, the park on campus on a nice warm day can be pleasant and not too noisy.

Pen and paper works well with revision for exams. Writing down your thoughts can help with ordering them. It also means you can arrange things in ways which are more intuitive for you than laying them out in the rigid columns which form the default settings in Word. Spidergrams and Mind Maps are great ways to revise, and you can use pen and paper to create revision flashcards.

But even just for assignments and dissertations the use of pen and paper to help lay out your ideas can help. You are under no obligation to write your notes in any particular style. You can use your own words rather than the academic language you will need to use in the assignments themselves. You can draw pictures, use different colour pens (a personal favourite) and even fold your paper into unusual shapes. Maybe you can find other uses for the paper whilst you are thinking about your assignment (http://www.origami-fun.com/) – why spend your work breaks (which you should always take, whether using computers or pen and paper) staring at photos of yourself when you could spend it trying to master the dragon’s head. Also, there’s no obligation to write your notes and thoughts on a flat piece of paper, you’ll certainly find your notes are more distinctive if you’ve written them on an origami frog.


An origami frog with the Gibbs reflection cycle helpfully written on its back.

Pen and paper might seem obsolete, but they offer an opportunity to approach working environments, organising ideas, and even breaks, from a new angle. It might give you some new ideas.

The SQ3R Reading Method

You will find that you will have to read a lot of sources at university. Fortunately you will not have to read them in the same way as you would read a book for pleasure – you don’t have to read the whole book, or read every word or sentence. One of the main skills you will learn at university is how to read selectively, i.e. finding the bits of books, articles, websites, etc, that you need and ignoring the irrelevant parts.


There are plenty of strategies for reading, this post is about the SQ3R method.

SQ3R stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review. Each word corresponds to a step in the process.

Firstly you should Survey the chapter/book/article/etc which you are about to read. Look for clues as to what it’s about, titles, headings and subheadings, visual elements like pictures and graphs plus their captions, footnotes (if you see it references other sources you have found useful then it might also be useful), etc. At this stage it is also a good idea to skim read the introduction and the conclusion as these should tell you what the piece discusses and concludes.

The next step is to Question the piece. Ask yourself questions about the piece. Why are you reading this piece? Has your tutor asked you to do so, and if so why? Did you find it yourself, and if so how? Did another source recommend it? From step one, Surveying the piece, have you formulated any questions? You can use the headings or other points of interest to construct questions – if you find one section has the heading ‘Cognitive behavioural therapy’ then you can create the question “What is cognitive behavioural therapy, and how is it useful to my work?”. These Questions can form the basis of your note taking as they give you a framework to work with as well as helping you concentrate your efforts on answering relevant questions.

The next step is to Read. Thinking about the Questions you have set yourself, read the parts of your piece which you think will answer them. Use the cues from the Surveying step to work out where to Read, but use this step in the process to Read the piece more carefully, ensuring you can answer your questions. Re-Read any section which proves difficult or unclear.



After you have Read the piece you must Recite what you have Read. This is a very important step as it is here that you begin to reinforce what you have learned. Summarize the answers to your Questions. You can do this verbally at first, but it is recommended that you write down your summaries in the form of notes. Use your own words as much as possible as this will help you to understand what you are writing, rather than simply copying it out which will not aid learning. Arrange your notes in ways which will help you remember – different people have different ways of approaching this, so use a style which you know will help you.

Finally you must Review your work. This means going back to the notes you have made in order to refresh your memory of the piece. Do this at regular intervals as the more your Review your work, the more you will remember in the long term. As a general guideline Review your notes the day after you have made them, and a couple of days after that, then do so regularly for as long as you need to remember the information. Reviewing the notes does not have to be a passive activity, you can turn your notes into flashcards (see our post on this topic from last month), or a spidergram (something else we covered recently), anything to make you engage with the information, rather than simply reading over it. You could even do something as simple as try and explain it to a friend.

Spidergrams

Having trouble organising your ideas? Spidergrams or spider diagrams are an efficient and useful tool for putting your ideas down on paper and planning assignments, creating a web of ideas and phrases which you can use to plan what you will say and when.

For instance, if you want to decide where to go on holiday you can use a spidergram.


Click to expand

How to make a spidergram

A spidergram is meant to fit on a relatively small space. Try to use one piece of paper, two if absolutely necessary. You are trying to present your ideas in a compact form, save the in depth detail for the assignment itself. However you should not make your spidergram too small either, space it out so you can read each branch of the web, and see what it is connected to. It can get confusing if you cannot see which points link to each other, or cannot read a point

Start with the subject. Place it in the middle of the diagram (in this case the question of where to go on holiday). It is a good idea to indicate which is the central ‘bubble’ – maybe highlight it or use a different shape/lettering/etc. From here all your ideas will flow, and they are connected to the central subject.

Each branch of the web represents a different main point. Around the central point write your secondary points. If there are further points to be made have them branching off from the secondary ideas. In the example above the secondary points are examples of countries the writer is considering going to on holiday. The branches coming off the points marked “Spain” and “Thailand” are thoughts which the writer has related specifically to those countries.

Each point needs to contain just enough information to tell you what the point is about. Summarise what you want to say. Too many words and the spidergram won’t be useful as there will be too many words on it. Smaller branches are used as examples to support the ideas and points in bigger branches.

When doing a spidergram for your assignments make sure that you know where any information you use comes from. You could have small branches coming off each example to note where it came from, or you can include the reference location in the text on each branch. Do whatever makes most sense for you.



Click to expand

In summary:
- Use a whole piece of paper - leave yourself lots of space for you ideas.
- Put the subject/question in the centre.
- Put each main point on a new branch - the examples and related thoughts will form branches coming off each main point.
- Summarise - don't write too much.
- Make sure you know where you got all your points and examples from, you don't want to have to search through all your notes to find lost information.
- Leave space to add notes later, you might forget to add a piece of information when you make the spidergram and you don't want to end up having to redraw the whole thing just to add a new idea or example.