This quarter, the greatest practice I’ve learned in terms of reading strategies is annotating to more actively focus on what I’ve read as well as look back to specific moments within the readings. Annotating has drastically improved my reading skills as, in high school English classes, I would never do the reading assignments because I was always distracted and felt discouraged that what I was reading wouldn’t stick; it felt like a waste of time. [ADD SPECIFICS FROM HS?] This quarter, in annotating, I was able to refer back to specific moments as physically highlighting and noting important parts meant that I was actively processing what I was reading, illustrating how making reading a physical process supported my ability to retain information. Alongside retaining information, annotating helped me to refer back to specific parts of the book more easily as changing colors and styles of what I was annotating made it easier to spot where I learn about a new character, place, or important quote. If I wanted to search for Trevor Noah perforating his cousin Bulelwa’s eardrum in the memoir Born A Crime, I would know that I highlighted new characters in orange and underlined their relation to him or I could recall that I highlighted the moment that comes just after—when his grandmother wouldn’t hit a white child— and know that I could find it the page before. This illustrates how actively reading through annotation helped me pinpoint certain moments in addition to how it helped me retain specific moments within the text.
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