READING STRATEGIES

ANNOTATIONS, SUMMARIES, ETC.

ANNOTATIONS• Annotations are the marks—underlines, highlights, and

comments—you make directly on the page as you read. Annotating can be used to record immediate reactions and questions, outline and summarize main points, and evaluate and relate the reading to other ideas and points of view. Your annotations can take many forms such as the following:

• Writing comments, questions, or definitions in the margins• Underlining or circling words, phrases, or sentences• Connecting ideas with lines or arrows• Numbering related points• Bracketing sections of the text• Noting anything that strikes you as interesting, important,

or questionable

ANNOTATIONS (CONT.)• Most readers annotate in layers, adding further annotations on

second and third readings.

• Annotations can be light or heavy, depending on the reader’s purpose and difficulty of material. Your purpose for reading also determines how you use your annotations.

PARAPHRASING• Paraphrasing is restating a text you have read by using

mostly your own words. It can help you clarify the meaning of an obscure or ambiguous (unclear) passage.

• You might choose to paraphrase rather than quote when the source’s language is not especially arresting or memorable.

• You might paraphrase short passages but summarize longer ones.

• Remember: the goal is to translate the passage into your own words, but if you do need to keep the original words for whatever reason, put them in quotation marks and cite it. (We will discuss citations soon!)

SUMMARIZING• Summarizing is important because it helps you understand

and remember what is most significant (or important) in a reading. Another advantage of summarizing is that it creates a condensed version of the reading’s ideas and information, which you can refer to or insert into your own writing.

• Summarizing enables you to integrate other writer’s ideas into your own writing.

SUMMARIZING• A summary is a relatively brief restatement, primarily in the

reader’s own words, of the reading’s main ideas. Summaries vary in length, depending on the reader’s purpose. Some summaries are very brief (a sentence).

• A summary presents only ideas. While it may use certain key terms from the source, it does not otherwise attempt to reflect the source’s language, imagery, or tone; and it avoids even a hint of agreement or disagreement with the ideas it summarizes.

ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY EXERCISE

To do a one sentence summary exercise you must:

1. Number all of the paragraphs in what you are reading.

2. Write a one sentence summary of each paragraph, even if one of the paragraphs is only a sentence long.

3. Write a one sentence summary of the entire article.

Remember, this exercise is just an exercise, type of summary. The one you will be doing for Progression 1 is a full paragraph.