Before taking English 110, I was not a very good annotator. I never really spent the time while reading an article for class, trying to annotate it and break down the text so that I was able to understand it. Now that I have taken this class, I have found myself annotating almost everything. I even do it when I’m reading an article for a class other than english, I have just found it to be very helpful because I sometimes have to read something multiple times in order to understand it fully. Since taking this class, I think that my critical reading and annotating skills have improved tremendously. Annotating has helped me to become a better reader. It helps me to understand readings in more depth than I would have if I wasn’t doing the annotating process. When I get an article to read for class, I tend to underline the important sentences and I will mark any confusion that I have while reading in the margins. I will also write in the margins if I agree with something, don’t agree with it or even if I can relate to it. After reading the article, if it is assigned, I will write an informal writing response that goes with the article I just read. As you can see in the link provided, this is the blog post that I was assigned to write after reading the article “Bad Feminist” by Roxane Gay. In Susan Gilroy’s article, “Interrogating Texts: 6 Reading Habits to Develop in your First Year at Harvard”, she also discusses the process of annotating. She says in the article that it is a good idea to “mark up the margins of your text with words and phrases” and to “get in the habit of hearing yourself ask questions”. If you look at my annotation examples in the article written by Roxane Gay, you will see that I mark up the margins of the article I am reading as well as even asking questions. The annotations I tend to do are mostly are mostly U’s and Q’s. Every once in a while I will have an R, meaning that I was able to relate the text to something. I have found that asking a lot of questions and underlining the important aspects of the article have really helped me. After taking English 110, I have found that the whole annotating process to be extremely helpful. It has helped me to develop the skills in order to how to properly annotate a piece of writing.
