Reading Strategies for the College Student: Annotation

One of the most important skills that college writers can have is the ability to read well and to comprehend what they are reading.  Without this key ability, students are often left feeling as though they don't understand what they have read or as though the things that they have read aren't making sense.  Overall, good reading skills are a key element in the development of good writing skills.

Herman and Wardrip cite the strategies of expert readers delineated by Pressley, noting that proficient readers, "Know their purpose for reading, continually monitor their understanding, and adjust their reading effort to the complexity of the text."(48)  They go on to assert that developing a variety of reading strategies can help to facilitate the development of these expert reader skills. 

How then may peer educators assist their clients in the development of these skills?  The answer is by introducing them to and encouraging them to use a variety of different reading methods.  In the next few posts, I'll review reading methods from a couple of different sources.  Think of these strategies as tools that you can supply to your student's writing toolkit.  For this first post, let's look at the annotation technique described by Herman and Wardrip in "Reading to Learn".

Annotation

Annotation is a method described by Herman and Wardrip in which students are encouraged to not only analyze the content of what they are reading but also to create a mental representation of what they are reading.  This is done by teaching the student to annotate a variety of key elements that are often incorporated into texts such as:

• "difficult or new [science] vocabulary words and in-text definitions;
• difficult nonscience vocabulary words;
• main ideas or arguments and related supporting ideas or evidence;
• headings, transitional words, and other signposts;
• inferences; and
• conclusions." (49)

This is a great tool for use with science textbooks because it highlights the importance of remaining aware of vocabulary and not simply pushing past words that are unknown.  In addition, it also encourages the student to not simply look for facts but to also understand the arguments and development of different ideas, processes, and theories.  This is particularly important in the field of science as this knowledge builds upon itself a great deal.  Because of this, it is important that students not simply memorize a series of steps or facts, but that they instead begin to develop a true understanding of what they are learning.

Works Cited

Herman, Phillip, and Peter Wardrip. "Reading To Learn." Science Teacher 79.1 (2012): 48-51. Academic Search Complete. Web.