Annotation Assignment

Assignment: Annotation

What is annotation?

To annotate is to make notes directly on a text as one reads and rereads it, identifying significant features, discovering patterns of features, and speculating on meanings. It is a crucial means of paying close attention to a text whether one is preparing for a class discussion, generating ideas for an essay, or just experiencing the richness of a text for pleasure. So fundamental to what readers do, annotation is comparable to hammers for carpenters and spoons for cooks, according to John E. Schwiebert (Reading and Writing from Literature. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001).

Why do we annotate?

We annotate because it encourages us to notice and think about the many features of texts and enables us to keep track of those features and our thoughts

Students who are already experienced annotators can experiment with the varied forms of annotations, thereby expanding the uses they typically make of annotation. The assignment gives all students the opportunity to examine a text closely.

Instructions for this assignment:

1. In the center of a blank sheet of paper, tape a photocopy of a short text--a short poem, portion of a long poem (perhaps a stanza), or portion of a piece of prose (perhaps a paragraph). If you would rather type than photocopy the text, be sure to transcribe the text exactly.

2. Annotate the text.

a. Mark the text. Marks include underlining, highlighting, circles, brackets, arrows, and asterisks.

1.) Mark interesting features of the text. A feature might be a phrase, word, part of a word (for example, a vowel or consonant whose sound strikes you as interesting), even a punctuation mark or line or stanza break. Readers who are proficient in scansion (the analysis of metrical patterns) also use marks to identify stressed and unstressed syllables and metrical feet.

2.) Mark the relation of features to each