By Katie Azevedo, M.Ed.
Whatâs the purpose of annotating? Iâm asked this a lot because annotating text has a bad rep. Throughout a week, I hear every kind of resistance, from it takes too long, I donât know what to annotate, I donât know how to do it, and itâs pointless.
I get it. I really do. If youâve never been taught how to annotate text correctly, it would feel annoying and forced and slow.
But believe it or not, annotating text serves an actual purpose. (I know! Bananas.) In other words, the whole act of taking notes on what weâre reading has the potential to be useful. And, once you understand how to annotate in a way thatâs useful, youâll find that annotating text becomes so much easier to do.
In this blog post, Iâm not teaching you how to annotate. I have so many tutorials and videos that teach annotation skills, such as the following:
- 11 Annotation Techniques
- The Highlight and Rewrite Strategy
- What to Highlight When Reading Novels
- The 6 Most Common Annotation Mistakes Youâre Making
Instead of teaching you how to annotate in this post, I am going to answer the question Whatâs the Purpose of Annotating? In other words, Iâm going to give you the top 3 most compelling reasons why annotating text is actually HELPFUL.
My hope is that once you understand the point of annotating, youâll get to reap the benefits.
What’s the Purpose of Annotating? 3 Hidden Benefits of Annotating Text
Yes, there are benefits to marking up your text as you read it. Itâs not just about âlooking smartâ or âdoing it because the teacher said to.â
1. Annotating Increases Focus While Reading
Not everyone struggles with focus while reading, but many people do. If you often zone out while reading, or realize that youâve read several pages without having any idea what happened, then annotating might be a strategy to try. (You might also want to try these focus strategies.)
Reading involves many parts of the brain, from the vision centers to the language centers, to everything in between. But it doesnât involve much physical or kinesthetic action. In other words, you donât move much when youâre sitting down and holding a book.
The more physical something is, the more we can usually sustain our focus as we do it. When we annotate, we add a level of movement and physical action that is just enough to help us concentrate. Think about it: You have to hold the pencil, hold the book a certain way to be able to write in it, and then write in it. This is pretty hard to do and be zoned out at the exact same time.
Even if you never come back to your annotations (you should, which I talk about in #3), they serve a purpose because annotating helps you stay focused on what youâre reading, which increases how much you can understand.
2. Annotating Helps You Understand What Youâre Reading
Annotating text helps your reading comprehension. You probably already know this, but reading comprehension is related to the amount of information that you can extract and understand from the text.
Annotating helps your reading comprehension for several reasons. First, when you annotate, you will read slower. This may be annoying at first, but if your goal is to actually understand what you read (how can that not be your goal?), then reading slower is a good thing.
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Next, when you take notes on the right things, you are giving your brain the opportunity to think about, process, and rephrase important concepts from the text. If youâre not understanding the text, then you wonât be able to take notes on it, and this is good information that you donât want to run away from.
If youâre using the highlight and rewrite strategy, which I recommend, part of that strategy involves summarizing chunks of text. Summarizing what youâre reading helps you make sense of it. In fact, if the text doesnât make sense, then you wonât be able to summarize it.
3. Annotating Lets You Get Something Useful From the Text for a Future Purpose
This is my absolute favorite benefit of annotating text. And I donât think itâs talked about enough. Let me say this loud and clear: the entire point of annotating is so that you get something useful from the experience
When you annotate text, you should know what it is that youâre looking for, and your annotations should match exactly that.
For example, if youâre reading a science article that you hope to use in your research paper, you should read and annotate for evidence that youâre looking to use in your research paper.
Another example is if youâre annotating a novel that you know youâre going to write an essay on. In that case, your annotations should be about parts of the text that you plan to use in your essay.
A third example is if youâre annotating a history book as you read it, knowing that youâre going to have a test next week. In this case, your goal is to understand the important ideas and vocabulary, so thatâs what you should annotate.
If youâre annotating a short story that youâre going to have a test on, or a discussion about, then annotate for comprehension, which means you would summarize short chunks of text as you read. You could also annotate for themes, symbols and events.
If youâre reading a book for pleasure, I suggest you donât annotate it at all, or maybe just annotate parts that you find inspirational.
If you look at all these examples, Iâm giving you, you realize they all have something in common. Every example â from reading, a novel, a research paper, a textbook or a short story â involves annotating in a way that will be useful to you. Every example involves taking notes related to the reason youâre reading the text in the first place.
Final Thoughts about the Purpose of Annotating
Annotating is so much harder to do when you donât know why youâre doing it. When youâre just highlighting random things, writing down stuff in the margins that you think your teacher will like, or just circling big words you come across, then yes, annotating will seem pointless and difficult.
Therefore, the first step is to get clear on why youâre reading the text to begin with. What do you want to get out of it? What will you be using it for? Get the answers to these questions first, and then youâll be able to annotate the right things. And that, my friend, is the purpose of annotating.