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Overview
Throughout the semester my reading comprehension abilities have grown immensely. Through our many readings and annotation practices I learned how to read beyond the text and look for the author's purpose and the context of what they are discussing. I learned to identify other components of the rhetorical situation as well, including exigence, audience, and genre. Taking the rhetorical situation into account when reading a text gave me a wider lens into what the author is discussing and allowed me to engage with the text by asking questions and forming connections to my own ideas and experiences. Here, I have included two examples of my annotations that reflect how my reading comprehension skills improved this semester.
Kami Export - Lamott, Anne, Shitty First Drafts-1.pdfIn high school, reading long articles was exhausting and I could never retain the information I read but I also HATED annotating. Every annotating assignment I was forced to do expected me to highlight and comment but I never knew what I was supposed to be highlighting and commenting so I never actually referred to my annotations to help me.
This became very obvious when we had to complete our first annotation practice this semester: "Shitty First Drafts" by Anne Lamott. This assignment was what made me realize that annotating could actually be a helpful tool and not just something I'm forced to do. But before I got there, my first attempt at annotating the article was not so great. After not receiving full points on an a simple annotation assignment I knew this class was about to teach me A LOT. I decided to meet Professor Michaels for office hours and as it turns out I was annotating all wrong! I was only summarizing the author's points and not contributing anything to the conversation. During this office hour meeting, Professor Michaels said something that completely changed how I saw annotating. She told me that annotating is just writing down your thoughts and ideas and about the text and, while this may seem simple, I had never thought about it like that! I had tons of thoughts and ideas about the text!
Scan 09 Dec 24 23·27·51.pdfAfter our first annotation practice, I learned to have a conversation with the text and this helped me better understand all the readings even better. Simon Frith's "The Voice" was the reading that reflected my improvement in reading comprehension the most. This reading was particularly challenging because of the complicated language and the various references to artists and songs. Despite the challenge, it gave me an opportunity to use the skills I had learned to understand and interpret the text. I wrote down every big thought and opinion I had whole reading and related to, agreed, and disagreed with the author throughout the chapter. Later on, when writing the rhetorical analysis paper, I was able to reference my annotations and use them as part of my writing which made my it a lot more clear and cohesive.
Knowing how to properly annotate a text was also helpful during the research process leading up to my opinion-editorial and even in classes like Communications! I was able to highlight and annotate my thoughts, ideas, and opinions on all my sources which made the research process a lot simpler to navigate.
This is a skill I will definitely be applying for the rest of my college career.
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