CRITICAL READING

ANNOTATING

LECTURER : AFDHALINA, M.Hum

COMPILED BY:

THE 4th GROUP

ALVI NURUL ILMI HARAHAP (0304183177)

HAFSHOTUR ROHMAH (0304183173)

KHAIRUNNISA ERWINA HASIBUAN (0304182084)

MIFTAHUL ZANNAH (0304183175)

MILLENI MARAYA (0304182139)

SITI NURUL HIDAYAH (0304183174)

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT-4 (3rd SEMESTER)

FACULTY OF TARBIYAH AND TEACHER TRAINING

STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY OF NORTH SUMATERA

2019
 PREFACE

First of all, we want to say thanks to Almighty one Allah SWT that has given us
blessing and healthy so that we can finish our paper on time. The second, shalawat and salam
to our Prophet Muhammad SAW who has guided us from the darkness into the brightness
and also because of Him, we can finish this paper.

This paper was prepared in order to fulfill one of the tasks that given by Madam
Afdhalina, M.Hum as the lecturer of Critical Reading subject. And also thank you for Madam
Afdhalina, M.Hum for guiding us so we can complete paper about annotating.

Although it has been arranged maximally, but as human, we realize that this paper is
far from perfect. Therefore, we hope a constructive criticism and suggestion from the readers
so that this paper can be better next. We hope, this paper can be a tool that can help students
understand what annotating is.

And the last, hopefully this paper can be useful for all the readers and may Allah
SWT always bless all the efforts that we have made. Aamiin.

Medan, 28th September 2019

The 4th Group

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE ........................................................................................................................... i

TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................... ii

CHAPTER I : INTRODUCTIONS

A. Background ............................................................................................................ 1
B. Identifications Problem .......................................................................................... 1
C. The Purposes .......................................................................................................... 1

CHAPTER II : DISCUSSIONS

A. The Definition of Annotating................................................................................. 2

B. The Benefits of Annotating .................................................................................... 3
C. The Situation We Can Do Annotating ................................................................... 3
D. The Ways to Annotate ........................................................................................... 3
E. The Strategies to Annotate A Text......................................................................... 5
F. The Example of Annotated Text ............................................................................ 6

CHAPTER III : CLOSING

A. Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 7
B. Suggestion .............................................................................................................. 7

REFERENCES ................................................................................................................. 8

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 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTIONS

A. Background
Critical reading is a more active way of reading. It is a deeper and more
complex engagement with a text. Critical reading is a process of analyzing,
interpreting, and sometimes evaluating. When we read critically, we use our critical
thinking skills to question both the text and our own reading of it. In critical reading,
there are some ways that can we do to understand of what we read. One of them is
annotating. By annotating a text, we will ensure that we understand what is happening
in a text after we have read it. As we annotate, we should note the author’s main
points, shifts in the message or perspective of the text, key areas of focus, and your
own thoughts as you read. However, annotating is not just for people who feel
challenged when reading academic texts. Even if you regularly understand and
remember what you read, annotating will help you summarize a text, highlight
important pieces of information, and ultimately prepare yourself for discussion and
writing prompts that your instructor may give you. Therefore, this paper will let us
know more specific about annotating. And we are from the 4th group will discuss it in
chapter II.

B. Identifications Problem
1. What is annotating?
2. What is the benefit of annotating?
3. When we can do annotating?
4. How the ways to annotate?
5. What is the strategies to use when annotating a text?

C. The Purposes
1. To know the explanation of annotating.
2. To gain the benefit of annotating.
3. To know when we can annotate.
4. To understand the ways to annotate.
5. To learn the easy strategies of annotating.

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 CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

A. The Definition of Annotating

An annotation is a note or comment added to the margins of text or an article that
briefly summarizes or contextualizes key information. This type of annotation is different
than an annotated bibliography. Annotating a text is an active reading strategy that
improves comprehension, and it is the beginning of learning and remembering processes.
It requires the student to take time to understand what they are reading, and put the
information into their own words.
Students who annotate their texts are reading to make meaning rather than reading
just to compete an assignment. Annotation requires the student think about what they are
reading and then translate the information into their own words. Though annotating a text
takes more time than the passive activity of highlighting key words and phrases, students
actually spend less time studying if they annotate because they are learning the material
while they read.
Annotating a text or marking the pages with notes is an excellent if not essential way
to make the most out of reading you do for college courses. Annotations make it easy to
find important information quickly when you look back and review a text. They help you
familiarize yourself with both the content and organization of what you read. They
provide a way to begin engaging with ideas and issues directly through comments,
questions, associations, or other reactions that occur to you as you read. In all these ways,
annotating a text makes the reading process be an active one, not just background for
writing assignments, but an integral first step in the writing process.

A well-annotated text will accomplish all of the following :

 Clearly identify where in the text important ideas and information are located
 Express the main ideas of a text
 Trace the development of ideas / arguments throughout a text
 Introduce a few of the reader’s thoughts and reactions

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 Ideally, you should read a text through once before making major annotations. You
may just want to circle unfamiliar vocabulary or concepts. This way, you will have a
clearer idea about where major ideas and important information are in the text, and your
annotating will be more efficient.

B. The Benefits of Annotating

There are some benefits of annotating, they are :
 Provides a purpose for reading
 Improves comprehension
 Offers an immediate test of understanding
 Increase concentration
 Seldom necessitates a reread of the material
 Create a study tool

C. The Situation We Can Do Annotating

Before Reading :
 Examine the front and back cover
 Read the title and any subtitles
 Examine the way the text is set up (book, short story, dialogue, diary, how the
chapters work, etc)

During Reading :
 Mark in the text
 Write in the margins(as discussed here)
 Add quotes to your commonplace book

After Reading :
 Reread your annotations-draws conclusions to questions you have asked
 Examine patterns/repetitions-determine possible meaning
 Determine the significance of the title now that you have read the work

D. The Ways to Annotate

Your annotation of a text will work hand-in-hand with your dialectical journal.
Marking a book (or using Post-Its in school-owned books), story, or poem as you read

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will make for more active and close reading and will provide you with notes to refer back
to when you fill out your journal or write about the text. Since you will be annotating
works all year, you should come up with a system that works for you. Effective
annotating is both economical and consistent. When marking or annotating a text, use
any combination of the following methods :
 Make brief comments in the margins or any blank space available (between the
lines, inside the front cover, random blank pages, etc)
 Ask questions in the margins when something strikes you as curious
 Circle or put boxes, triangles, or clouds around important words or phrases
 Use abbreviation symbols to note your response to certain passages (brackets, stars,
exclamation points, question marks, etc)
 Connect words/phrases/ideas with lines or arrows
 Put other page number references in the margin when you see a theme or symbol
repeated or expanded upon
 Underline, but use this method sparingly-underline only a few words at a time and
never do so without a comment in the margin. If you want to draw attention to an
entire passage, instead use a bracket to enclose the section and comment in the
margin
 Highlight- use the same caution as with underlining
 Color code a work-you may choose to use different colors when marking passages
that refer to important symbols or reveal development in main characters
 Use Post-It notes when you cannot write in the book

PARAPHRASE / SUMMARY OF MAIN IDEAS

Going beyond locating important ideas to being able to capture their meaning through
paraphrase is a way of solidifying your understanding of these ideas. It is also excellent
preparation for any writing you may have to do based on your reading. A series of brief
notes in the margins beside important ideas gives you a handy summary right on the
pages of the text itself, and if you can take the substance of a sentence or paragraph and
condense it into a few words, you should have little trouble clearly demonstrating your
understanding of the ideas in question in your own writing.

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DESCRIPTIVE OUTLINE
A descriptive outline shows the organization of a piece of writing, breaking it down to
show where ideas are introduced and where they are developed. A descriptive outline
allows you to see not only where the main ideas are but also where the details, facts,
explanations, and other kinds of support for those ideas are located.
A descriptive outline will focus on the function of individual paragraphs or sections
within a text. These functions might include any of the following :
 summarizing a topic / argument / etc
 introducing an idea
 adding explanation
 giving examples
 providing factual evidence
 expanding or limiting the idea
 considering an opposing view
 dismissing a contrary view
 creating a transition
 stating a conclusion
This list is hardly exhaustive and it is important to recognize that several of these
functions may be repeated within a text, particularly ones that contain more than one
major idea. Making a descriptive outline allows you to follow the construction of the
writer’s argument and/or the process of his/her thinking. It helps identify which parts of
the text work together and how they do so.

COMMENTS / RESPONSES
You can use annotation to go beyond understanding a text’s meaning and organization
by noting your reactions-agreement / disagreement, questions, related personal
experience, connection to ideas from other texts, class discussions, etc. This is an
excellent way to begin formulating your own ideas for writing assignments based on the
text or on any of the ideas it contains.

E. The Strategies to Annotate A Text

10 easy strategies to use when annotating a text :
1. Read with a pencil in a hand
2. Use sticky notes to write comments, observative, relationships, etc in the book

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 o These notes can prevent you from having to read the chapter
o They become a table of contents or a study guide
3. Rewrite headings as question
4. Read the section at a time and make notes next to each sentence :
o Use a plus sign (+) for information that you know
o Use a minus sign (-) for information that you do not know
5. Circle key terms
6. Mark examples by making notations : underline , [bracket], asterisk *, etc. Just be
consistent!
7. Mark terms or concepts likely to be on a test by placing a "T" beside them
8. Use arrows to connect related ideas
9. Number sequentials points 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on in the text
10. Summarize charts, graphs, and / or tables and you can use sticky notes for these

F. The Example of Annotated Text

Pollution and Its Negative Effect

Pollution is the degradation of natural environment by external substances

introduced directly or indirectly. Human health, ecosystem quality and aquatic and
terrestrial biodiversity may be affected and altered permanently by pollution.

Pollution occurs when ecosystems can not get rid of substances introduced into
the environment. The critical threshold of its ability to naturally eliminate substances
is compromised and the balance of the ecosystem is broken.

The sources of pollution are numerous. The identification of these different

pollutants and their effects on ecosystems is complex. They can come from natural
disasters or the result of human activity, such as oil spills, chemical spills, nuclear
accidents and the other things. These can have terrible consequences on people and
the planet where they live: destruction of the biodiversity, increased mortality of the
human and animal species, destruction of natural habitat, damage caused to the
quality of soil, water and air.

Preventing pollution and protecting the environment necessitate the application of

the principles of sustainable development. we have to consider to satisfy the needs of

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 today without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. This
means that we should remedy existing pollution, but also anticipate and prevent future
pollution sources in order to protect the environment and public health. Any
environmental damage must be punishable by law, and polluters should pay
compensation for the damage caused to the environment.

Explanation

1. Underlined : Paraphrase main ideas

o 1st Paragraph : The damaged caused by pollution might be reversible
o 2nd Paragraph : Sometimes, ecosystem be able to cope with pollution
o 3rd Paragraph : Pollution is not always come from human, it also caused by
natural disasters
o 4th Paragraph : For those polluters must be get punishment, it can reduce
pollution to make a healthy environment
2. Italic : Comment
Why the ecosystem can loose its ability to cope with pollutant? How often it
happened?

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 CHAPTER III

CLOSING

A. Conclusion

Based on our discussion above, we can conclude that annotating is one of the
strategies of reading that we can use to make us more focus on what we read,
understand a detail of a text, keep tracks of thoughts and feelings, keep track for
important details, prepare for discussion and prepare to write about a text.

Therefore, we can use four ways of annotating that can help us during read a
text. It includes paraphrase main ideas, descriptive outline, comment or respons about
the text and highlighting the main point.

Although annotating needs much time and stationary to do, in our opinion this
is worth it. Because when we are annotating it can make us more understand about a
text until the details though.

B. Suggestion
To all the readers, we hope this paper is useful for you and you can use
annotating to make you more understand of what you have read, so your reading
ability will be better next. If you found any error in our paper, please help us to repair
our paper with your practical suggestions.

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 REFERENCES

Murray, Anna. Annotating a Text. https://www.pfw.edu/offices/learning-

support/documents/annotating-text.pdf. (September, 27th 2019)

Turnbull. How and Why to Annotate a Text. https://www.genevaschool.org/wp-

content/uploads/11th-Gr-How-to-Annotate-a-Text.pdf. (September, 27th 2019)

https://www.chino.k12.ca.us/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=34965&data
id=72719&FileName=Annotation%20Guidelines.pdf

https://www.covcath.org/uploaded/06_Students/Annotation_Guide_AP_Language.pdf