Find The Focus

Writing to Learn
Find the Focus

Writing is an important aspect of learning. As you listen to a lecture, or read a section of your textbook, you'll find that taking notes will not only help you remember the information later, it will also help you process the information as you hear or read it.

Taking notes requires the ability to listen for the main idea or find it in a piece of writing, and summarize it briefly. The key is briefly. It can be counterproductive to try and take down every word the professor says in a lecture, or to copy a complete sentence describing a concept or an idea. Instead, use phrases that contain the key idea and a brief description of its meaning.

In the following exercise, practice summarizing each idea listed by writing a short description of it in the space that is provided. Try to keep each note to about ten words. Use abbreviations that you know and will remember when reviewing the material later. (All excerpts are taken from PowerWeb essays.)

1. The Constitution provides an organizational blueprint for the national government and for the federal relationship between the national government and the states.

2. Cross-cultural research in child development shows that parents readily accept their society's prevailing ideology on how babies should be treated, usually because it makes sense in their environmental or social circumstances.

3. Wergeles believes that satellite imagery will become part of the growing arena of competitive intelligence in which companies try to wrench market share from rivals by gathering previously unavailable information.

4. As suggested by all the standard indicators- truancy, dropout rates, involvement rates, graffiti, vandalism, violence-youngsters in small schools rarely display the anger at the institution and the people in it that was so blatant at Columbine and is evident in many high schools elsewhere as well.

5. The legal profession historically has taken a dim view of lawyers holding equity interests in clients, fearing conflicts between a lawyer's own interests and those of the client.

6. While affirmative action is promoted by some as a necessary policy to compensate for centuries of exclusion and discrimination, others claim that it is discrimination simply disguised under a new label but with different groups being discriminated against.

7. Withholding information can break faith with readers, Josephson adds. "Journalists really do wrestle with these issues, but since the public only sees what's published, they never know what went into the struggle. When they don't see [the struggle], the public can only assume journalists don't care. That sort of arrogant trust will not cut it anymore with the public, or with many journalists who I find are becoming increasingly more cynical with the decisions made by their news organizations, because they know how business-driven these decisions have become."

8. Since a lax monetary policy that causes inflation also erodes the value of the national currency, a government that commits itself to a fixed exchange rate against the dollar is implicitly committing itself to the same low inflation rate as the United States.

9. In dealing with possible climate change, policymakers, stakeholders, and the public have to confront competing economic interests, significant political change, and such difficult issues as intergenerational equity, international competition, national sovereignty, and the role (and competence) of international institutions.

10. It can clearly be seen that the most important aspects of effective implementation of benchmarking projects are adequate planning, training, and open interdepartmental communication, and these factors are ranked among all the critical success factors for benchmarking projects.