Throughout this semester, I have grown in my ability to actively read in an efficient manner. I used to dread the idea of having to annotate my reading, but now I know that if done properly, annotations can help me better utilize the text in my future writing. My favorite annotation strategies are underlining and marking strong quotes to use as later evidence, writing my reactions next to text, and summarizing an author’s point. Marking quotes makes looking for evidence to embed in my paper much easier later on. Writing my reactions while reading the text helps jog my memory for what exactly my opinion was of the author’s points when I am trying to develop my argument. Summarizing an author’s point not only helps me understand their argument more clearly, it also gives me an initial paraphrase to work off of when trying to describe the author’s argument in my paper. Often times, my thoughts are much clearer when seeing a reading for the first time than after I have read other contrasting arguments and the specific reading is no longer fresh in my mind. Writing down my reactions to the text allows me to revisit how I was feeling the first time I encountered the author’s points. I also have gotten much better at looking for unnecessary sentences to cut out of my drafts, editing my thesis in my final draft, and reading my paper out loud to catch typographical errors.
I will definitely take these active reading strategies with me in the future as I start to have to read more scholarly journal articles. For my athletic training classes, we read a lot of medical journal articles and case studies that can be lengthy and difficult to comprehend. Using these forms of annotations will help be comprehend the text and mark important points to save for later analysis. In my analysis, the writing strategies that I have been able to practice in English 110 will transfer to scientific writing. Knowing how to omit unnecessary sentences, edit my thesis overtime, and check for errors are all strategies that can be used in all forms of writing.
