Annotating sources can be a helpful way to understand a difficult text better. As Susan Gilroy mentions in her Essay when annotating a text one should, ” Mark up the margins of your text with… words… ideas that occur to you”. Doing this breaks down a large portion of information into more digestible pieces. When I annotate I have a similar process to that of Gilroy because it is difficult for me to understand text the first time. For example, I had to read an excerpt on genome editing from the Dalai Lamas book; The Universe in a Single Atom. First I simply read the story to get an idea of what it was about. After I read it once I began to annotate the text. I would read each paragraph slowly and then write the main ideas and claims that I saw in the margins next to the paragraph. This tactic was extremely helpful because it allowed me to find evidence for essay prompts more efficiently. When I needed to find a quote on a specific topic I would just look at my margin notes to see what paragraph my evidence would be in instead of reading each paragraph over again. Next I would highlight any words that I didn’t understand in that paragraph and define them in my margin notes. I would then plug the definition of the word into the sentence it was in so that I could understand what the sentence meant. I believe that margin notes are the most important part of annotating. They are basically a simplified version of each paragraph in the texts. I would also add my personally opinions to my margin notes after I read the paragraph. Gilroy explains that ” Annotating puts you actively and immediately in a ‘dialogue’ with… the issues and ideas you encounter in a written text”. Adding my opinions to my margin notes would engage me with the issues in the text and allow me to make “text to self” connections. On page 70 of the Dalai Lama Text the Dalai Lama describes 6 key ethical factors. I decided to translate those factors into my own words and then I wrote my version of them at the top of the paper and referenced them frequently.
In conclusion, annotating is a skill that can be used in any academic subject. Professors tend to teach quickly so it is important to read the information on their slides and write down the most important parts in your own words. Biology and science classes often times have students read scholarly articles that contain a lot of scientific information. These articles tend to have a lot of complicated words and ideas. Annotating them helps the reader understand the “skeleton” of the article like Gilroy mentions. Without annotations it would be difficult to grasp the concept of difficult texts.
