The very presence of an structural element in your notes may remind you of all the information to which it referred.

Brackets    (    )

The information of secondary importance should be noted in brackets below the element in your notes to which it belonged. Here we go one step further and note only an empty pair of brackets, or a pair of brackets with a single word in them. This will be enough to jog our memory and recall what information was contained in them in the original.

Let's see the example below (MacShane 1).  Aren't these notes still enough to jog your memory, even now, 10 pages later? Check against the full text below.

Here I have only left three of four sets of brackets empty, but depending on your own recall powers you could have left any number of them "empty" when you took your notes. If this seems a little daunting at first try noting a single word in the brackets to represent a larger chunk of information. In the example above this would give you (UK),(borders ) and (euro) respectively. Again this is something that you will work out for yourself as you gain in experience and get you know your own capabilities. Two people will not necessaríly ba able to recall the same things.

Compare what you can remeunber with the foll text below. (MacShane 1)

And today? The changes, even since 1973, when Britain entered the European Economic Cormmunity, are remarkable:

The Europe of 1973 with its border control on goods and cars has gone. The myriad of currencies and cureney controls acting as a blocknge to fair, transparent, effective business has been replaced by a single market. One where the majority of EU citizens sensibly use one currency - the Euro.

When you practise, don't ba afraid of trying out this technique and not being able to recall the information in the brackets. Failing and trying again is an important part of the learning process. It is important to explore your own linits

and capabilities through frequent practice so that when you come to do it for real you know exactly to what extent you can rely on your memory.That is all part of testing yourself, knowing your limits and stretching them.

Examples eg

Often just noting eg... or eg plns one word will be enough to remind us of an entire example because the context and the illustrative nature of the example will make it easier to recall. To save time don'tnote the full stops in the grammatically

correct e.g..

Reasons COS

Noting cos, representing "because of", and the indication that something must be recalled (three dots ..) is enough to remind us of what we didn't note.