How to Annotate

Annotate

            Meaning: Add making notes on what you read, usually in the margins.:

               Techniques for annotating Textbooks:

                           You can create your own way of marking your textbooks.

  1. Use markers to highlight the main ideas, key concepts, numbered items, definitions and examples.
  2. Circle or underline terms and their definitions.
  3. Put a question mark next to difficult sentence, unknown word, or a confusing passage.
  4. Mark key concepts with an asterisk or a checkmark or underline.
  5. Ask you read, ask questions in the margin .
  6. Write a summary of a long selection including main idea and supporting details.

Annotate the following reading selection.

                        Being able to look at a page of words and determine what they mean is skill that many of us take for granted. However, reading is a complex perceptual task that requires the ability to think abstractly and must be learned. It is probably the most difficult and subtle of all the academic abilities. The critical period for learning to read comes at the beginning of school life when students are the least experienced and the most bewildered. It is amazing that most young students do master the skill of reading. The world is open and available to those who master reading, since reading can be the key to obtaining information, education and entertainment.

                        Reading provides us with a prime source of information. Reading daily newspapers can keep us apprised of international, national, state, and local events. Journal articles in specific fields, such as nursing or court reporting, make the latest job-related information available to professionals who have completed their formal education and are in the work force. Reading encyclopedias and dictionaries or specialized dictionaries, such as medical dictionaries, allows us to inform ourselves on any topic of interest to us.

                        In addition to providing general information, reading is the key to getting a good education. Our history bounds with stories about successful people, such as some of our first presidents, who were self-educated by reading. The story of Braham Lincoln reading by candlelight is one that most Americans hold dear. In addition, to reading independently to obtain an education, acquiring a formal education also depends to a great extent on one’s ability to read. Absorbing information from textbooks and other printed material is a vital skill that is demanded of students at all levels. Students who develop good reading skills have a definite advantage in an academic setting and are more likely to get a good formal education.

            Although obtaining information and getting an education are important, perhaps the most important and the most often forgotten thing about reading is that it offers us entertainment. If we are lucky enough to be read to as children, whether at home around bedtime by our parents or at school after lunch by a teacher as we relaxed during “quiet time,” we can remember the joy that reading stories can bring. By reading, we can enter a world of fantasy or adventure. We can get involved in the lives of people we would like to know, and often, through reading we meet some people that make us relieved to be able to close the book and escape from them. In either case, reading is entertainment at its best.

            Reading enables us to experience vicariously many things that otherwise would be missed. As we read the news to learn information about our world, we experience events in foreign places without leaving home. As we read history and science books, we relive events from the past that we were unable to experience firsthand. As we read literature, we an leave the bounds of reality and experience the imaginations of great writers from all ages. Therefore, reading, that wonderfully complex skill, provides us with an avenue for acquiring information, securing a good education, and finding great entertainment.

 

 

                          

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