In the present text, I am going to explain why students should take notes in ways that are meaningful to them and not rely on materials provided by others.

Firstly, it is useful to explain what note-taking means and what are its advantages, functions, and importance.
The activity of note-taking comes from the verb “to note”, which means to pay attention to something. In particular, when you take notes you should pay attention on what you listen to. Therefore, listening is one of the activities that are involves in taking notes. The other ones are mainly writing and processing. Indeed, note taking is a complex set of tasks which consists of a way of recording information captured by another source. It is a specific process of writing information.
Anyway, it does not mean to write everything down, but you should organise the information into a hierarchy and so you should recognize key concepts and the main information from the secondary one and write them down with the strategies that suits best for you. Thus, it implies a sorting and selecting activity of what is relevant. Indeed, good notes allows a permanent record of key information, but it is not the only reason why note taking is important. For example, the process of taking notes helps you concentrate, understand, memorize and remember more information, force you to think about what to write, providing a permanent record.

Since note taking is a processing activity and an essential learning skill and since everybody has its own brain that works differently, everyone should take notes in its own way that suits best for him/her. So, everyone needs to find the method that allows a good note taking. However, notes should present: the nominal style because it is clear and concise to focus the attention on the main concepts easier; keywords instead of long sentences because they are easier to keep them in mind and proper language, but also your own one because you should express the concepts with your own words for your better understanding and not transcribe word for word unless you have to write specific definitions.
There are different systems of how to take notes, but it is useful to use diagrams, schemes and textual organizers to connect and facilitate two or more concepts and help the visual fixation of the information. In addition, you can develop your abbreviations and symbols to make your note taking quickly.

So, because of the relevance that everybody needs to take notes how he or she wants and with the strategies that are meaningful for him or her, it follows that people and in particular students should not rely on materials provided by others, such as teacher-prepared notes or PowerPoint slides, because it does not improve their performance and their comprehension of the concepts since note taking involves the processing activity and the cognitive exercise and force you to think about what and how to write that is what matters the most.