Annotating Readings

Reading in college isn’t quite the same as reading in high school. Or reading for pleasure. Or even reading to prep for a history exam or a biology lab. it’s less about reading just for information – like the names of the parts of the cell or the year that the War of 1812 started – and more about being able to use what you read. It’s not about memorization; it’s about interaction and that happens through a process we call annotation.

Interacting With a Text

First, let’s make sure we’re on the same page about what a text is. For our purposes, a text can be the obvious – written words on a page or in a document – but it can also mean the sorts of things that you interact with on a daily basis: music, websites, videos, social media.

Over the course of the semester, you’re going to be working with texts in all of those different mediums, but the same basic idea of interaction is always going to hold true.

What does that mean? It means that as you read or watch or listen to a text, you should be focused on understanding it, but also on thinking bout how you relate to it or connect with it. Or how you don’t.

That’s going to require you to make reading an active process. Some of you already do things like that: you take notes in the margin, you highlight, maybe you underline key phrases or information. That’s heading in the right direction. But annotating is a bit more in depth than just that.

What Do I Do?

The process isn’t that different from taking those notes in the margin. Except, instead of simply noting down to remember something, you’re going to be noting down your feelings/thoughts and your observations.

Notice that I italicized ‘your’ twice in that paragraph? That’s important. Because annotating like this is all about you. The things you should be doing, all center on your specific individual connection to the text you’re ‘consuming’. You should be:

• • Marking things you feel are important
  • Pointing out your disagreements
  • Adding your own thoughts to those of the writer
  • Putting things the writer said into your own words
  • Highlighting what you think is a strong example
  • Making (and marking) connections between the text and your own life
  • Connecting what you’re reading to something else you’ve read (or watched, or heard)
  • Highlighting things that confuse you or raise questions for you
  • Noting the things that jump out at you – for good and bad
  • Question the writer’s conclusions, especially if you think they’re wrong

Reading in this course – and in life in general – should be about making connections and finding a meaning in whatever text you’re interacting with. It should not be about memorizing something to spit back on a test.