Source: Day 87: Somewhere over the rainbow, joeyanne, Flickr
Annotation is carrying on a conversation with the text and its author while you are reading. The advantages of annotating are many:
- It helps you fight the fatigue factor when completing a reading assignment for one of your courses or when you are taking a test designed to measure your reading skill.
- It helps you extract the essential information from a text.
- It helps you read closely or “actively” and allows you to interact with the writer as if you were sitting and discussing the text together.
- It can boost your grades. Watch “Active Reading: Speaking with the Text” to see how.
The two characters in “Active Reading” took drastically different approaches to how they used their textbooks. The young man wrote nothing in his book so that he could sell it after he finished the course. The young woman took ownership of her textbook by marking it up and placing sticky notes on important pages. She also showed us that good annotation consists of two parts: (1) highlighting and (2) taking notes.
The young woman’s better grade in the course could be due to the fact that she had her own notes to study from and didn’t have to reread the entire book. If you’re allowed to write in your books, do you?
Check the boxes below that describe your efforts at annotation.