Page 189 - Keys To Community College Success

KEY 6.4 An informal outline is useful for taking notes in class.

Tropical Rain Forests
What are tropical rain forests?
— Areas in South America and Africa, along the equator
— Average temperatures between 25° and 30° C (77°–86° F)
— Average annual rainfalls range between 250 and 400 centimeters (100–160 inches)
Rain forests are the Earth’s richest, most biodiverse ecosystem.
— A biodiverse ecosystem has a great number of organisms co-existing within a defined area.
— Examples of rain forest biodiversity
– 2½ acres in the Amazon rain forest has 283 species of trees
– a 3-square-mile section of a Peruvian rain forest has more than 1,300 butterfly species and 600 bird species
— Compare this biodiversity to what is found in the entire U.S.
– only 400 butterfly species and 700 bird species
How are humans changing the rain forest?
— Humans destroy an estimated 50,000 square miles of rain forest a year (10 times the area of Connecticut).
– Cutting down trees for lumber
– Clearing the land for ranching or agriculture
— Rain forest removal is also linked to the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, which worsens the greenhouse effect (where gases such
as carbon dioxide trap the sun’s energy in the Earth’s atmosphere as heat resulting in global warning).

Source: Audesirk, Teresa, Gerald Audesirk, and Bruce E. Byers. Life on Earth, 9th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2011, pp. 559–561.

Cornell T-Note Format
The Cornell note-taking format, also known as the T-note format, con- Cues Notes
sists of three sections on ordinary notepaper: 2
■ Notes, the largest section, is on the right. Record your notes here
in whatever form you choose. Skip lines between topics so you can
clearly see where a section begins and ends.
■ The cues column goes on the left side of your notes. Leave it blank
while you read or listen, and then fill it in later while you review.
You might insert key words or comments that highlight ideas, clar-
ify meaning, add examples, link ideas, or draw diagrams. Many
students use this column to raise questions, which they answer
when they study.
■ The summary goes at the bottom of the page. Here you reduce your
notes to critical points, a process that helps you learn the material.
Use this section to provide an overview of what the notes say.
Create this note-taking structure before class begins by following
these directions: Summary
■ Start with a sheet of 8.5-by-11-inch lined paper. Label it with the
date and lecture title.
■ To create the cues column, draw a vertical line about 2.5 inches
from the left side of the paper. End the line about 2 inches from the bottom of
the sheet.
■ To create the summary area, start at the point where the vertical line ends (about Listening and Note Taking
2 inches from the bottom of the page) and draw a horizontal line that spans the
entire paper.

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