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This will help you to think about the questions you need to answer and make your reading and note taking more focused

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When you are taking notes for a specific essay, it is a good idea to plan your research questions.

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In an academic situation, you will do a lot of your reading with a specific essay question in mind.

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Creating a text plan as you read can make it much easier to navigate a text. When you skim read, you are looking for the general meaning of the whole text and of individual paragraphs. To create a text plan, note the general meaning of each paragraph the first time you read, and then decide which paragraphs can be grouped together.

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Taking notes in your own words is important. It will help you avoid potential plagiarism. If you take notes from a text usign the same words, then repeat them in an essay, you could be plagiarizing by accident. Also, writing about, rather than just copying what you read.

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Scanning is a technique used when you are looking for specific information. It is important for you to practice this skill as academic reading is usually for a specific purpose such as answering an essay question. This skill will help you find information more quickly.

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The stars becomes brighter than the rest of its galaxy- a huge system of stars and gases.

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Kathryn had found a supernova, or an explonding star.

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When you read a factual article, look for definitions of topic-specific vocabulary you are not familiar with.
A signal can be a word or phrase, such as or, in other words, or that is, or punctuation, such as a comma, parentheses, or dashes.

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You can organize your notes with a map showing relationships between the main ideas. Skim the text and write down a phrase that summarizes each main idea. Leave room betweeneach idea. Draw a box around each one. Then as you readf more closely, add supporting details to your map. Write them around each main idea and draw boxes around them. Then draw lines to connect details to the main idea.

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The tone of a text can help you to identify and understand the writer's opinion. This is important if you plan to use the reading in an essay because it will give you an idea whether the writer is for or against a certain position. The author's opinion is often indicated by certain fixed phrases, and the author's choice of adjetives and adverbs.

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Synonyms are words or phrases that have similar meanings. Writers often use synonyms to avoid overusing words in a text. Often, an important word is explained, defined, or repeated as a synonym. If you don't know the meaning of a word, try to find its synonym in the text. If you can't find a synonym, try to guess its meaning from context. Sometimes, you will need to look up the word in a dictionary.

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These paragraphs present examples and other information to support arguments or to give context to the topic.

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These paragraphs group together all the arguments on one side of an issue.

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A well-balanced text presents more than one side of an issue. Even if the author is biased they will often present opposing arguments to make the text appear neutral.

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These paragraphs give real, true information rather than opinion, argument, or speculation. Authors often establish the facts of a situation before presenting opinion, argument, or speculation.

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Authors often group the most important figures and statistics together in one paragraph.

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Use charts and tables to organize the data before writing the report.

Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images

A data report is a technical document that details whatever data you have collected and shows how it was analyzed. While a data report can be a complex document, it's organization doesn't have to be. If you ever wrote a lab report in high school, you already know how to write a data report. It's usually divided into four sections: an introduction, a body, a conclusion and an appendix. All you need is a spreadsheet program and a word processor to write a professional data report.

Preparation

1. Identify your audience and keep them in mind while writing the report. A data report should be reader-friendly for those who will only skim through the data, looking for relevant facts to back up the conclusions, as well as those who are more technically minded and will be reading all of the data to ensure it supports your conclusions.

2. Gather all of the data you used for the report and write down your analysis of it. It's not wise to begin writing your report until after you have analyzed the data and identified your results.

3. Organize your data in one or more spreadsheets as needed. All of your data should be included in the report, even the data that wasn't analyzed. If you used secondary data, such as data gathered from other reports, keep this separate from your own data.

4. Determine whether or not you can highlight important data in charts. Most spreadsheet programs like Excel can generate charts automatically once you have organized the data as needed. Well-chosen charts help demonstrate your conclusions.

Writing the Report

1. Write an Introduction section. This usually contains three sections. First summarize the purpose of the report and the data being analyzed. Include any background information explaining why the report was requested. Then summarize the questions posed in the analysis of the data and the conclusions formed from the analysis. Finally, briefly outline what is contained in the rest of the report.

2. Create four sections in the body of the report: Data, Methods, Analysis and Results. In some situations it may be preferable to combine the Methods section with the Analysis section. If your report contains more than one set of data with independent analysis, repeat these four sections as often as needed.

3. Write a description of the most important data used for analysis in the Data section. Copy the spreadsheets containing your data and paste these after your written description. In Microsoft Office, simply highlight the cells, copy them, and then paste them into the Word document.

4. Write down the methods you used to gather the data and analysis in the Methods section.

5. Write down your analysis of the data in the Analysis section. Include in this section what was analyzed and the conclusions you made from the analysis. Insert any charts you created from the data in this section.

6. Create a Conclusions section. Restate the questions you raised in the Introduction, as well as the most relevant results from the analysis. If your report contains more than one set of data or analysis, this is the place to compare the different results as needed. Include any questions or recommendations for additional data as needed.

7. Include a last Appendix or Appendices section, if needed. If you have hundreds of pages of data, it may be preferable to put it in the appendix rather than in the Data section of the report. Insert any secondary data mentioned in the report in the Appendix, including a reference indicating where the data came from.

About the Author

A published author and professional speaker, David Weedmark has advised businesses and governments on technology, media and marketing for more than 20 years. He has taught computer science at Algonquin College, has started three successful businesses, and has written hundreds of articles for newspapers and magazines throughout Canada and the United States.

Photo Credits

Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images

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A data report is a technical document that details whatever data you have collected and shows how it was analyzed. While a data report can be a complex document, it's organization doesn't have to be. If you ever wrote a lab report in high school, you already know how to write a data report.

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This is the first paragraph in which a new ideas is mentioned.

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Identifying the porpuse of parts of a text.

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Identifying the porpuse of parts of a text.

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Usually different parts of a text perform different functions. Identifying the porpuse of different parts of a text can help you recognize the structure and understand its overall purpose. Some common functions are listed below.

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You can't make it at home because the recipe is still a secret.
|_________________________||__________________________________|
effect                                       cause

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HIs experiments resulted in a thick, cloudy liquid.
|__________________________||____________________|
cause                                 effect

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Texts about science often examine the reasons (or causes) why something happens and what happens as a result (or effects). These causes and effects are usually claerly indicated by signal words such as because, because of, cause, due to, a reason, result in. For example:

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To identify the main ideas of a text, first look at the title, introduction, and any headings. These will give you clues about the topic and the main ideas. The skim quickly over each section, paying particular attention to the first sentences. Make a note of the main ideas and look back at these notes after you have read the text again.

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It, this, these, those, that, there,its.

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He, she, we, you, thye, who, them, my your, her, his, our, their, me, him, her, his, our

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Pronouns are used instead of repeating the same word many times.They commonly refer backward to a name or idea, but they can also refer forward. It is important to understand which idea the pronoun refers to in order to fully understand the text. These are some of the most commonly used pronouns:

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When you are reading, it is very important that you can follow the flow of ideas through the text. It is not enough just to understand the words you find in a text, you need to be able to identify words that connect ideas - and the ideas that these words connect.

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Summarizing is giving a brief statement of most important points of a text. As you read, highlight or underline the main points of the text. Then use the information to write a summary. Even when you are just writing a summary for your notes, you should use your own words to avoid potentially plagiarizing the text if you decide to use it in an assignment later.

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Skim reading is a useful skill to learn when you are preparing for academic study. You are likely to have a lot of texts to read, a lot of research to do, and not enough time to read everything on a topic. It is therefore often important to decide whether it is worth reading a text in greater detail. You can do this by skimming a text quickly to identify the main ideas using headings, sub-headings, and topic sentences to help give you a bigger picture.

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TAKING NOTES: RESEARCHING AN ESSAY.

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This will help you to think about the questions you need to answer and make your reading and note taking more focused

# data[].attributes.body
When you are taking notes for a specific essay, it is a good idea to plan your research questions.

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In an academic situation, you will do a lot of your reading with a specific essay question in mind.

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The tone of a text can help you to identify and understand the writer's opinion. This is important if you plan to use the reading in an essay because it will give you an idea whether the writer is for or against o certain position.
The author's opinion is often indicated by certain fixed phrases, and the author's choice of adjectives and adverbs.

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Previewing key parts of a text before you read makes it easier for you to understand its main ideas. Look at the pictures, read the title, introduction, and headings in the text, and skim over the passege. Then think about the topic and what you already know about it. When you have a sense of what the text is about before you read, you should be able to understand and remember it better.