RC Annotation Techniques & Strategies

puglover

Hi guys. I've heard it's best to annotate the least amount as possible on RC to account for time and accuracy on answers. I was wondering, what are your strategies and methods towards annotating for the RC passages. Do you highlight specific things like author's tone or change in language, etc? I would love to know to try out new ways of annotating on the digital test to see what works best.

sarakimmel

I tried a bunch of annotation techniques and found highlighting to be the best for me. I typically highlight important info, unique words, etc in one color, other people's opinions in another, and author's opinion/tone in a third. It keeps me engaged, helps me to find key words/important references, and breaks up the passage. I will warn that any new annotation strategy will slow you down, at first. It takes time to fold it into your routine, so maybe try various things, one at a time, on untimed sections to see what works for you, then adapt as needed for time as you get more comfortable.

puglover

@sarakimmel said:
I tried a bunch of annotation techniques and found highlighting to be the best for me. I typically highlight important info, unique words, etc in one color, other people's opinions in another, and author's opinion/tone in a third. It keeps me engaged, helps me to find key words/important references, and breaks up the passage. I will warn that any new annotation strategy will slow you down, at first. It takes time to fold it into your routine, so maybe try various things, one at a time, on untimed sections to see what works for you, then adapt as needed for time as you get more comfortable.

Yes, this helps a lot. I think I would benefit from highlighting, I normally underline mostly, but I recently have tried highlighting and that helps things stick more for me. I feel like people have said that it's not a good idea to do a lot of annotations because it takes away from timing. Maybe I will practice selective highlighting. I really appreciate your comment!

Constantine

You can use highlights as a learning tool at the moment, untimed. Timed: if you -3 or better, you can highlight. But if you worst then that highlighting is an additional obstacle.