Annotating
In my experience with annotating readings in high school, I have found annotating to be tedious because it seemed to take me a lot longer to finish reading if I have to mark up all of the pages. Therefore, I really did not enjoy annotating. I also hated writing in the actual pages of a book because I did not like to make the pages look messy, so I tried to use sticky notes instead. Another thing that I hated about annotating is that I never knew what I should be looking for in the text, and a lot of the parts that I made notes of with sticky notes ended up not being important or useful. My teachers in high school never really gave me instructions on what I should mark up when annotating, so I think my annotations were just random. However, I remember using sticky notes on some of the pages to help me remember what was happening in the story on those specific pages, and I would sometimes make notes of themes or quotes that I thought might be useful as evidence for essays.
Even though I have not enjoyed annotating in the past, I am hoping that I will learn to like it or find it useful through my college classes. I like how Michelle gave the class some ideas of what to look for in the text. These topics include characters, images, themes, structure, and purpose. This should help improve my techniques with annotating. I think that I will try out using different colored highlighters for each of these topics to help make my annotating more organized and then write out some notes about what I highlighted to the side of the page.
I agree with you! The time it takes to annotate definitely makes the whole process of annotating less attractive. However, I really do see the benefits of it and how I process the text.
ReplyDeleteI think your strategy of using different colored highlighters may really help you! I mentioned this in my blog post, but I use a .5 lead mechanical pencil to make my annotations in books less messy.
I definitely empathize with the time-consuming aspect of annotating that you have experienced. One thing I found helpful was observing different themes I saw as I read the book, so that I had some examples once it came time to write the essay. I would recommend using different colors to signify separate themes as well. I hope you find something that works!
ReplyDeleteI do not enjoy annotating too, but once you start it definitly can become a habit and you will be happy to have markings to look back to!
ReplyDeleteI think random annotations can sometimes be the best types of annotations! I recently read an essay about the relationship between a reader and a writer. When reading complex texts, it's important to note whatever sticks out to YOU at first. Complex texts don't always have one singular meaning, so those first impression, "random" annotations can really set you up for a personal interpretation of a text.
ReplyDeleteI also did not like annotating as it broke the flow of reading and increased the time it took for me to read a piece of text. Like you said, writing on the pages of a book also seemed messy, but sticky notes felt like a waste of paper, so I stuck to my pen and highlighter. However, I discovered that keeping my annotations concise helped me with maintaining a flow while reading.
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