一步一个脚印

Note Taking During a PhD
在博士期间做笔记

By Tara Brabazon 塔拉·布拉巴赞著
Office of Graduate Research 研究生院
Flinders University 弗林德斯大学
Adelaide, South Australia 南澳大利亚阿德莱德

Tara talks about one of the most basic – yet one of the most powerful – academic skills: note taking. How can PhD students future proof their notes to build a research career?
塔拉谈到一个非常基本，却很重要的学术技能——记笔记。博士生如何记好含金量高的笔记来保证以后有自己的“金饭碗”？

Hello. I’m Tara Brabazon. I’m the Dean of Graduate Research at Flinders University, and welcome to Vlog 18, “Note taking during a PhD”.
你好。我是南澳大利亚阿德莱德弗林德斯大学研究生院院长塔拉·布拉巴赞（Tara Brabazon）。欢迎观看第18部微视频：“在博士期间做笔记”。

A Phd is extraordinary for one reason: it is an original contribution to knowledge. Yet this  achievement is often based on a series of rudimentary tasks and skills. The challenge for PhD students is, although many of these skills seem quite straight-forward, it can be stressful if you feel you are lacking them. And so this week I would like to talk about how to write high quality notes during a doctoral program.
博士学位之所以非凡，有一个原因：它是对知识的更新。然而，这项成就通常基于一系列基本任务和技能。博士生面临的挑战是，尽管这些技能中的许多似乎很简单，但如果你觉得自己缺乏这些技能，可能会感到压力很大。因此，本周，我想谈一谈在博士项目中如何做高质量的笔记。

Great research, and indeed great researchers, are based on outstanding note taking. For example, I have hundreds of files of notes on my laptop that I have migrated from computer, to computer, to computer. I have every single note from every single article and book I have read since 1991. I have tens of thousands of thousands of pages of notes. And this is a great advantage, because this means that every paper, every book, every speech, every talk that I write, I already have a file with hundreds and often thousands of pages of notes. So it provides for me an outstanding framework and platform on which to write new and innovative ideas.
出色的研究——乃至出色的研究人员——都基于出色的笔记记录。例如，我的笔记本电脑里有数百个笔记文件，这些笔记文件已从计算机迁移到计算机，再迁移到计算机。自1991年以来，我读过的每一篇文章和每一本书的笔记都有备份。我有成千上万页的笔记。这是一个很大的优势，因为这样的话，我写的每篇论文，每本书，每一个讲座，每一个演讲，我都已经有了一个包含成百上千页笔记的文件。因此，它为我提供了一个很卓越的框架和平台，可在此框架和平台上编写新的创新思想。

So, for example, right now I am writing a talk and article on zombie leadership. I have hundreds of pages of notes on zombies, I have thousands of pages of notes on leadership, and tens of thousands of pages of notes on higher education and higher education studies. So when I write this new talk I already have this outstanding series of ideas to help me get started.
例如，现在我正在撰写有关“僵尸领导力”（zombie leadership）的演讲和文章。我有数百页的关于僵尸的笔记，我有数千页的关于领导力的笔记，以及成千上万的关于高等教育和高等教育研究的笔记。因此，等到我写这篇新演讲时，我就下笔如有神，水到渠成了。

I understand there is a lot of worrying at the moment in doctoral education about note taking. And I do know where that comes from, as I have seen what’s been happening to undergraduate education in the last decade or so. There is a large minority of students who are moving through their studies without taking any notes of any kind. They are replacing the independent reading of articles and monographs with the reading of a teacher-prepared PowerPoint presentations.
我了解，目前在博士教育中，有关做笔记的问题很多。而且我知道问题的根源在哪儿，因为我目睹了十多年来本科教育正在发生什么。绝大多数学生在学习过程中没有做任何笔记。他们拿老师的PPT演示文稿来代替文章和专著的独立阅读。

Nowadays when I’m delivering an undergraduate lecture and often I see something odd happening among the students. Like a periscope, a mobile phone starts to rise up, a photograph is taken, and it comes down once more. That, supposedly, is the new way of taking notes!
如今，当我给本科生讲课时，我经常看到学生之间发生了奇怪的事情：就像潜望镜一样，手机开始上升，拍摄照片，然后再次下降。据说，这是记笔记的新方法！

What are the students doing? You could say they are too lazy to take notes. But I don’t believe that – I think that’s a bit of a cop out. But is worrying me more is students are so under-confident that they’re frightened that they are going to miss out on something, and tragically that something seems to be teacher-prepared slides, not their own independent reading.
学生在干什么呢？你可以说他们懒得做笔记。但是我不相信——我认为这有点牵强。然而，令我更加担心的是，学生是如此不自信，以至于他们害怕错过什么事情，而且可惜的是，他们最怕错过的是老师们准备的幻灯片，而不是他们自己的独立阅读。

So the question is: what happens when these undergraduate students enter a doctoral program? We don’t have much research on this at the moment, but it is very important that we talk about this issue.
所以问题是：当这些本科生进入博士学位课程时会发生什么？目前，我们对此没有太多研究，但是谈论这个问题非常重要。

Here’s ten tips I can share with you on how to take good-quality notes.
我可以与你分享十个技巧，以帮助你写高质量的笔记。

1) Don’t confuse taking notes with highlighting photocopies 不要将笔记和已标注的复印件混淆

In 2009, I asked my then Masters students to come in and see me and show me how they were doing their reading and research. There was a common problem in their assignments. Some paragraphs were fine, but others did not seem to relate to what came before them.
2009年，我让我当时教的硕士生与我见面，我想了解他们如何进行阅读和研究。他们的作业中存在一个很普遍的问题；有些段落写得很好，但有些地方似乎与上文内容没有衔接。

So I brought the students in and I asked them to show me the notes they prepared for their assignments so I could diagnose the problem. Only most students had no notes to show me. They simply pulled out of their bag a series of photocopied articles and book chapters with some highlighting on them, and a few notes scrawled on the side. This is a real problem, because this is not real note taking.
因此，我把学生带进来，请他们给我看他们为作业准备的笔记，以便我诊断问题。可是，大多数学生没有笔记可以给我看；他们只是从书包中取出了一些复印的文章和书的章节，上面有一些标注的地方，正文旁边还乱写了一些笔记。这是一个很大的问题，因为这不是真正的笔记。

Without notes, you remain wedded to the wording in the original article or book. This stops you from moving beyond the original ideas and onto your own interpretation. This, in turn, causes you to create a deeply fragmented article or assignment.
如果不做笔记，你的思维就会被文章或书中原来的字眼束缚。这样，你就无法对原文产生自己的独特见解，甚至会导致你写出来的东西杂乱无章。

2) Separate your note writing from your reading platform 将笔记与阅读平台分开

Take your notes on a platform that is separate from the article or book you are reading. This will force you to make a decision about what is important in the text. It will also separate your intention for the material from the intention of the researcher. For example, if your sources are electronic, put them on your tablet, and then take notes on your computer.
你做笔记的平台应该跟你所阅读的文章或书分开。这将便于你对文本中的内容加以取舍，而且，你对材料的意图与研究人员的意图也可以区分开来。例如，如果你参考的资料是电子版，你可以把它放在平板电脑上，然后在电脑上做笔记。

3) Ensure that every topic that interests you has a separate file on your computer 确保你感兴趣的每个主题在电脑上都有一个单独的文件

Organise your notes by subject, not by author or date. This means that, over time, you are going to have an incredible database of hundreds, or even thousands, of pages of notes on different topics. The value of these notes is incalculable in the long term sense of your career.
按主题来整理你的笔记，不要按作者或日期。 这样的话，随着时间的流逝，你将拥有一个惊人的数据库，其中包含数百个甚至数千个不同主题的笔记页面。长远来看，这些笔记对你的职业生涯的价值是无法估量的

4) Ensure that your references are accurately logged 精准地记录你的参考文献

This is will save you a lot of time later. I know this one seems like an incredibly self-evident truth. But, trust me, I see so many students that lose the will to live at the end of their candidature because they have to spend two months checking and filling in the gaps in their reference list. So record them once, record them properly, and save months at the end of your PhD.
这样可以节省你的很多时间，事半功倍。我知道这似乎是一个不言而喻的事情。但是，相信我，我看到很多学生因为不得不花两个月的时间检查并填补参考文献中的空白，就感到生不如死。因此，请把每个项目记录一次，正确地记录下来，这样你就可以在博士生涯即将画上句号中省数月的时间。

5) Ensure that you type your notes accurately 确保你正确地做笔记

Legibility matters because legibility gives you longevity. Take time to make sure your notes are in good condition, because the point of note taking is you are presenting research to your future self. Yes, they are important to you now, and what you’re doing in your PhD, but if you can really make notes excellent and interesting, you are also future-proof your career.
易读性很重要，因为易读性可以延长你笔记的寿命。花些时间确保笔记保持良好状态，因为做笔记的目的在于，向未来的自己展示研究。的确，笔记对于你现在以及在博士学位中正在做的事情都很重要，但是，如果你能做出含金量高的笔记，那么你也一定能端稳你的“金饭碗”。

6) Write down the argument that is being presented in the article/book in one sentence 用一句话写下文章或书中提出的论点，浓缩才是精华

The key challenge in note taking, and indeed the point of note taking, is to reduce the length of the original research, and present it in a way that you can use in your scholarship. Remember, your notes are meant to be short. To learn paraphrasing, read the introduction, conclusion and abstract, take a breath, don’t look at them, and write one sentence about why this research matters. Then, write another one about how that research will be useful to you. Those two sentences are the foundation of outstanding note taking.
做笔记的挑战——以及它的目的——是缩短原始研究的篇幅言简意赅，并让你能够把它应用到你的研究之中。请记住，你的笔记应该简短。如果你想学好复述，可以先阅读引言、结论和摘要，并休息一会儿，不要看文章的内容，然后写一句话解释为什么这项研究很重要。 然后，再写一篇关于该研究将如何对你有帮助的文章。这两句话是优秀笔记的基础。

7) When reading articles/books, look at the reference list first 阅读文章或书籍时，请先查看参考书目

A crucial technique of information literary that is rarely taught these days is asking students to assess the reference list of a given article or book. The first thing examiners when they assess your PhD is turn to your reference list. You should do the same thing.
如今，很少有老师让学生评估一篇文章或一本书的参考书目，但这是一个信息文学中的重要技巧。答辩老师评估你的博士论文时，首先要考虑的东西，就是你的参考文献。你也应该把参考文献当回事儿。

Turn first to the reference list of the article you are reading and assess it. Assess if the scholar is a high-quality one, and whether they are using high-quality scholarship. What sort of journals or books have they deployed? Are they refereed? Second, is this person obsessed by self-citation? Articles written by people like that are not going to be terribly useful to you. Third, are they making use of both analogue and digital sources? Don’t believe the author if you don’t believe their sources. Check and verify the calibre of their sources, and your own research will improve as a result.
首先看一下你正在阅读的文章的参考文献，并进行评估，然后评估该学者是不是高素质的学者，以及他有没有用高质量的文献。他引用了哪种期刊或书籍？那些文献有接受同侪审查吗？其次，这个人是否迷恋自我引用？像这样的人写的文章对你不会有多大用处。第三，纸质和电子资料都得到参考吗？如果你不相信作者的资料，就不要相信作者。检查并验证他参考文献的水平，就可以提高你自己研究的水平。

8) Copy down your quotations accurately 准确抄下你的引文

Carefully differentiate between your interpretation, paraphrasing and quotations. So many students get into real problems here. Once you have determined the quality of the article you are reading, and the references, think about the quotations. Basically, you should be paraphrasing as a default, unless the form as much as the content of the quotation matters.
要仔细区分你对参考文献的解释、复述和引用。许多学生在这里会遇到问题。确定了你正在阅读的文章和参考文献的质量后，请考虑一下引证方法。一般来说，以复述的形式总结出引文的中心思想即可；全文摘抄下来的情况极少，除非原文实在是字字如金，无可挑剔，

And please make sure your quotations are written down accurately with inverted commas. Things get very dangerous for the PhD student if the examiner becomes confused about whether you are quoting a source directly or paraphrasing it.
并且，请保证引文抄下来的内容是准确的，也不要忘记加双引号。如果博士生无法让答辩老师很清晰地看出他所引用的内容是直接引语还是复述，那么后果相当严重。

9) Ensure your notes are sufficiently detailed so you do not have to return to the original article/book 确保笔记足够详细，这样你不必返回原始文章或书

The whole point of note taking is brevity. But you do need to learn the delicate art of note taking. You must be detailed enough that you don’t need to go back to the article or book. 做笔记的关键是做到简练精准。不过，你还是需要学会做笔记的诀窍：你做的笔记，必须足够详细，不至于经常让你回去重新寻找原始的文章或书。

10) Ensure that your notes are sufficiently brief 确保笔记足够简短

Don’t paraphrase the entire article. Always err on the side of brevity if you can, with some accurately transcribed quotations if necessary. Inexperienced or worried students tend to over-paraphrase the article – basically they rewrite the article for their notes. You do not have to do that.
千万不要复述全文。如果可以的话，请尽量保持简洁，并在必要时提供一些准确转录的引文。没有经验或感到担心的学生往往对文章进行太多复述，可以说他们在笔记中换汤不换药把文章重写了一遍。你完全不必这么做。

For me, note-taking is the most important academic skill for undergraduates, postgraduates and experienced researchers. My entire career is based on the calibre of the note taking that I do. It would not have occurred if I did not read widely and take good notes. That is how important this is.
我认为，做笔记是本科生、研究生和经验丰富的研究人员最重要的学术技能。我整个职业生涯都是基于做笔记的能力。如果我曾经没有广泛阅读并记好笔记，那我今天就没有这个职业。笔记就是那么重要。

Unfortunately, note taking is becoming a neglected skill. A professor at Abilene Christian University Bill Rankin wrote recently: “About five years ago my students stopped taking notes. I asked, ‘Why are you not taking notes?’ And they said, ‘Why would we take notes on that? I can go to Wikipedia or go to Google, and I can get all the information I need.”
不幸的是，做笔记正成为一种被忽略的技能。 阿比林基督教大学的比尔·兰金（Bill Rankin）教授最近写道：“大约五年前，我的学生停止记笔记了。我问，“你为什么不记笔记？”他们说：“为什么我们要记笔记？我上维基百科或谷歌，就可以得到我需要的所有信息。”

Students need to understand that the point of note taking is not to gain information alone. It improves memory, it triggers recall, it also enables us to shape our interpretations and provides a guide through our disciplines and disciplinary knowledge. PhD students use a lot of different modes and methods – labs, fieldwork, practice-led or creative-led methods and unobtrusive research methods. However, all these disciplinary perspectives and protocols are based on reading, on finding a gap in knowledge which your PhD will fill.
学生需要了解，做笔记的重点不是仅仅获得信息。它能提高记忆力、激活记忆，让我们形成自己的理解，并为我们的学科和学科知识提供指导。博士生使用许多不同的模式和方法——像实验室、实地考察、以实践为主导或以创造性为主导的方法、非介入性研究方法等等。但是，所有这些学科视角和规程都是基于阅读，即寻找你的博士学位可以填补的知识空白。

It is your reading that leads to your thinking and interpretation. Critical thinking is based on critical reading. And passionate, powerful reading, writing and thinking creates a great PhD and a great PhD student.
只有阅读才让你能够思考问题并进行阐释。批判性思维基于批判性阅读：你必须要博览群书，学富五车，厚积薄发，笔耕不辍，才能称为一名优秀的博士生，完成一篇优秀的博士论文。

Content adapted for educational purposes from an excellent vlog by Tara Brabazon, the Dean of Graduate Research and the Professor of Cultural Studies at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, posted on YouTube on 26 July, 2016. See the video here.