Strategies for Reading and Marking Your Textbook
After completing your preview, you are ready to read the text actively. With your map, outline, list, or flash cards to guide you, mark the sections that are most important. To avoid marking too much or marking the wrong information, first read without using your pencil or highlighter. This means you should read the text at least twice.
FIGURE 5.4 > Examples of Marking
Using a combination of highlighting, lines, and margin notes, the reader has made the content of this page easy for review. Without reading the text, note the highlighted words and phrases and the margin notes, and see how much information you can gather from them. Then read the text itself. Does the markup serve as a study aid? Does it cover the essential points? Would you have marked this page any differently? Why or why not?
Source: “The Stress of Adapting to a New Culture,” Adapted from Discovering Psychology, 6th ed., p. 534, by D. H. Hockenbury and S. E. Hockenbury. Copyright © 2013 by Worth Publishers. Used with permission.
Marking is an active reading strategy that helps you focus and concentrate as you read. When you mark your textbook, you underline, highlight, or make margin notes or annotations. (Annotations are notes or remarks about a piece of writing.) Figure 5.4 provides an example of each method. No matter what method you prefer, remember these two important guidelines:
- Read before you mark. Finish reading a section before you decide which are the most important ideas and concepts.
- Think before you mark. When you read a text for the first time, everything can seem important. After you complete a section, reflect on it to identify the key ideas. Ask yourself: What are the most important ideas? What terms has the instructor emphasized in class? What will I see on the test? This can help you avoid marking too much material. On a practical note, if you find that you have made mistakes in how you have highlighted or that your textbooks were already highlighted by another student, select a completely different color highlighter to use.
Here are two additional guidelines about textbook marking:
Mark and Review
Among the best approaches to getting more from your reading are marking the text and reviewing carefully. These strategies are good enough for George Clooney. Are they good enough for you?
Source: Michael Buckner/Getty Images for American Foundation for Equal Rights
- Take notes along with marking. If you only make notes or underline in your textbook, you will have to read all the pages again. Rather than relying on marking alone, consider taking notes as you read. You can add your notes to the map, outline, list, or flash cards you created while you previewed the text. These methods are also more practical if you intend to review with a friend or study group.
- Do more than just highlighting or underlining. Highlights and underlines are intended to pull your eye only to key words and important facts. If highlighting or underlining is actually a form of procrastination for you (you are reading through the material but planning to learn it at a later date) or if you are highlighting or underlining nearly everything you read, you might be doing yourself more harm than good. You won’t be able to identify important concepts quickly if they’re lost in a sea of color or lines. Ask yourself whether your highlighting or underlining is helping you be more active in your learning process. If not, you might want to try a different technique such as making margin notes or annotations. If you find that you have made mistakes in how you have highlighted or that your textbooks were already highlighted by another student, select a completely different color highlighter to use. Just noting what’s most important doesn’t mean you learn the material, and it can give you a false sense of security. When you force yourself to put something in your own words while taking notes, you are not only predicting exam questions but also evaluating whether you can answer them. Although these active reading strategies take more time at the beginning, they save you time in the long run because they help you focus on the reading and make it easy to review.