Chapter 6: Reading Critically and Taking Notes

Create notes that preserve source meaning while separating quotation, summary, and your own analytical contribution.

What You Will Make

Create notes you can safely use after the source is no longer open. Each note needs an identity, locator, content label, and a statement of relevance. Keep exact copied wording visibly marked from the start.

Read for a Claim and Its Support

Identify the source’s question, answer, method, and limits. Then select the passage that matters to your essay. Copying pages of text without explaining their relevance can leave you with material but no usable argument.

Use QUOTE for exact words, PARAPHRASE for a restated idea, SUMMARY for a broader condensation, and MY ANALYSIS for your inference. A label does not replace citation, but it helps preserve the distinction while drafting.

Fictional teaching case: This lesson uses the invented campus-transit records in Chapter 1. Record labels and numbers are practice material, not real research to cite or submit.

Construct a Note

Source: Record C, method and item 3. Summary: Twenty students volunteered; eight reported a class ending after the last bus. Limitation: No random sample and no before-period responses. My analysis: The report identifies a possible timetable mismatch but cannot show how common it is across campus.

Notice what the note does not say: it does not call the survey representative or claim access got worse. Neither follows from these records. If your summary added either statement, compare it with the source and remove the unsupported inference.

Try It Yourself

Read a short section of a real source. Close it, explain the idea in your own words, and then reopen it to check accuracy and wording. Add the exact locator and a separate analytical response. If distinctive language must remain, quote and cite it according to the required style.

Write one question for further reading. For example: “Does another source measure the experience of students who did not volunteer?” That is a research task, not a missing fact to invent.

Check Your Work

Can you recover the precise source version and passage?
Are borrowed wording and your own inference distinguishable?
Have you preserved the source’s limits and level of certainty?
Does the note explain why you might use it?

Review notes before copying them into the draft, especially after changing your thesis.

Source Guidance

Paraphrased ideas still require attribution; exact borrowed wording needs quotation treatment. (University of Toronto)