Note-Taking for PhD Reading

C1 Academic English · Cornell Method · Zettelkasten

Where this fits — the 5-stream pathway

Academic English support for PhD-level work runs across five streams. Today is Stream 2 — note-taking — usually the most immediately useful place to start, because every other stream depends on it.

📚 Stream 1 — Academic Reading

Reading dense, theoretical texts efficiently. Skim, scan, deep-read. Identifying argument structure in papers.

📝 Stream 2 — Note-Taking (TODAY)

Cornell Method and Zettelkasten. How to take notes that you can actually use later — for synthesising sources, writing literature reviews, defending arguments.

✍️ Stream 3 — Academic Writing

Paragraph structure, hedging, academic register, lit reviews, building arguments on the page.

🗣 Stream 4 — Argumentation & Critical Thinking

Structuring claims, evidence, and counter-arguments. Cleft sentences and discourse markers for emphasis.

🎓 Stream 5 — Academic Communication

Supervisor emails. Seminar language. Defending your work. Eventually the viva.

Question for today:

Where is the most friction right now in your academic work? That tells us which stream to sharpen next.

Why notes are the spine of a PhD

By the end of a PhD you will have read several hundred papers. You cannot remember them. You cannot re-read them when you're writing. The notes you take now are the raw material your thesis is built from.

The wrong kind of note-taking — long passive summaries, copy-paste — produces a pile you can't use. The right kind builds a knowledge system you can return to in three years and immediately work with.

Two non-negotiable principles

  1. Write in your own words. If you copy-paste, the idea isn't in your head — it's just on your hard drive.
  2. One note = one idea. Notes that try to capture a whole paper at once are unusable later. Atomic notes are findable.

Three questions to ask of every paper you read

  • What is the author actually claiming? (in one sentence, in your words)
  • What evidence supports the claim? (and is it strong, weak, contested?)
  • How does this connect to other things I've read? (this is where Zettelkasten comes in)

The Cornell Method

Developed at Cornell University in the 1950s. Best for reading or lectures where you need to retain a single source clearly. Three zones on one page:

Cues

  • Key terms
  • Big questions
  • Page references
  • "What's the claim?"

Notes

  • The argument, in your own words
  • Supporting evidence (and how strong)
  • Definitions of new terms
  • Quotes — only if essential, with page numbers

Summary

One paragraph at the bottom. What is the single most important takeaway from this source for my thesis? Written after you've finished the notes, not during.

When to use Cornell

  • Reading a single dense paper top to bottom
  • Listening to a lecture or supervision meeting
  • When you need to remember this source clearly later

Strength

The summary box forces you to articulate the takeaway in your own words. That's the moment you actually understand the paper.

Weakness

One source per page. Doesn't connect ideas across sources. Which is what Zettelkasten is for.

Zettelkasten — "slip box"

Developed by sociologist Niklas Luhmann, who used it to write 70 books and 400 papers. The trick: tiny notes, each one capturing a single idea, all linked together. Over years, the system itself starts thinking for you.

2026-05-05-a

Single-cause explanations flatten the role of agency

Dominant framings that attribute outcomes to one external cause carry real explanatory force, but tend to flatten the agency of the actors involved. A pure structural frame can leave the participants without strategic responsibility in their own story.

Links: → 2026-05-05-b (related case study) · → 2026-05-04-c (theory of agency)

The four rules

  1. Atomicity. One idea per note. If a note has two ideas, split it.
  2. Your own words. Always. Quotes go in the source note, not the idea note.
  3. Link. Every new note connects to at least one existing note. The links are where the thinking lives.
  4. Unique IDs. Date-based works fine (2026-05-05-a). Means you can refer to notes from anywhere.

When to use Zettelkasten

  • Building a long-term knowledge base across a thesis
  • When you need ideas to find each other later
  • When the same concept keeps appearing across different sources — the system catches that automatically

Strength

It accumulates compound interest. Year three of your PhD becomes far easier than year one because the system already knows what you know.

Weakness

Setup cost. The first hundred notes feel pointless. The system becomes useful once you have a few hundred and can start finding things across them.

Live application

Bring up an academic paper you're currently reading. We're going to take notes on one paragraph together — slowly — using whichever system feels right.

For one paragraph:

Working time: 10:00

Your notes

After finishing the paragraph:

1. Read the note aloud. Does it stand on its own without the original paragraph?

2. If a colleague read this note in three months, would they understand it?

3. Where did the language slow things down? That's the next focus.

Homework before the next session

Take notes on 2–3 more paragraphs from the same paper using whichever system felt right today. Bring the notes to the next session — we'll polish the language together.