Embedded Files
Just Paper & Pen
Just Paper & Pen
When it comes to reading scholarly work in history, I like to keep it simple with paper and pen—and maybe some fun highlighter colors too. I print out texts on paper whenever a printer is accessible, making sure to incorporate margins wide enough for annotations. I usually mark up texts with bright colored pens and accompanying highlighter colors that emphasize important or noteworthy parts of the text. I enjoy the tangibility of marking up text on paper, especially during this time of online learning when almost everything is read on a computer screen. Ultimately, I feel that this is the most comfortable form of annotating for me and allows me to effectively deconstruct texts, line by line.
Understanding my Annotations
Understanding my Annotations
- Paragraph claim: highlight
- Unknown terms: highlight + (?)
- Miscellaneous terms/arguments: highlight
- Key terms: bracket
- Key concepts: underline
Restall, Matthew. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, Oxford University Press USA - OSO, 2004. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uci/detail.action?docID=272683.Created from uci on 2020-12-06 10:20:38.
My process of understanding and unpacking scholarly work begins with a brief read-through in order to gain an overall understanding of the context. After the first reading, I re-read the text slowly, taking the time to highlight, underline, and bracket terms and phrases that stand out to me and that I want to further examine.
I start my annotations by highlighting the main claim of the paragraph, and re-phrasing it in my own words to confirm my understanding. From there, I move on to identifying various rhetorical strategies and what they accomplish for the broader meaning of the text. Next, I search up and define unknown terms and unpack any other terms that I may have highlighted. I finish by interpreting the key terms and key concepts that I had bracketed and underlined. These interpretations are especially important to me when I refer back to the text and need to further engage with the author's arguments and the larger scholarly debate.
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