Annotating texts
Annotation as an active process
Annotating texts is something we expect students to do by and large throughout the course - but when and how are the associated skills actually being taught? You might well find that some students seem to possess expertise almost instinctively, but many - perhaps most - do not. The notes below are designed to encourage your students to develop these skills by recognising the importance of annotation as a record of reading texts 'actively'. Paper 1 is the ideal to place to focus attention on the importance of this.
In many places throughout this site, we talk about the significance of reading works in a way that demonstrates both cognitive and affective approaches - recognising that reading, understanding, analysing and interpreting literary texts is as much an intuitive, sometimes emotional experience as it is cognitive or 'intellectual'. And developing awareness of this - of what is going on in the encounters we have with these black shapes on the page, can often yield more considered, nuanced and perceptive engagement with them.
Annotation works best, therefore, when it reflects the idea of reading as an active process, when it records honestly and faithfully the different things going on from the moment we look at first page of the text - or perhaps even take the book off the shelf, or your students turn over the page and see the poem and prose passages for the first time in their Paper 1 exam. There are two strands to the business of effective annotation that it are worth addressing with your students:
Reading for different purposes
Try to encourage your students to approach annotating the unseen poem or prose extract as a process of breaking it down into elements that exist both within the text and ones that operate in our minds when we see, comprehend and interpret.
- Look at the text on the page:
- How would you describe its shape?
- Is it split up into stanzas or paragraphs?
- How long or short is the text?
- How long or short are the lines?
- Does it seem to present itself in a consistent, formal manner - or one that is more fluid, inconsistent?
- Look at the title:
- What does it suggest the text is going to be about?
- How does the language or phrasing of the title lead you to think in a particular way?
- Read for first impressions:
- What things do you notice the first time you read it through?
- What does it seem to be 'about'? This means - what is the literal subject of the text, but also what seem to be its thematic concerns?
- What things seem problematic, which elements are hard to understand?
- Read for content
- Read the text and only concentrate on the 'what'.
- How does the text present the narrator? Characters? Relationships?
- In what ways does the text make use of setting?
- What kinds of action are presented?
- Does the passage create a particular kind of atmosphere?
- What kinds of ideas, motifs or themes does it seem to present and explore?
- Read for language and style
- Diction - nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs?
- Syntax - sentence structure/length
- Sentence type (declarative/imperative/interrogative/exclamatory)
- Paragraph form/structure
- Dialogue?
- Imagery
- Metaphor/Simile
- Tone
- Repetition
- Narrative voice
- Sound
- Rhythm
- Structure
- How does the passage create narrative interest
- Does its power depend on one or more key contrasts?
- Is there a strong sense of development?
- How important is antithesis or opposition to its overall impact?
- Is the passage, in the end, somewhat ambiguous?
- Does the passage gain strength from the way it manipulates the reader, e.g. by creating an intimate relationship with them - or by keeping them at a distance?
- What kind of overall meaning does the passage communicate?
- Does there seem to exist some kind of 'messsage'?
- Is there a particular theme being presented? What, ultimately, is being 'said' about that theme?
- Is the effect of the extract one that invites us to feel, to think, a mixture - or something else?
Using different annotation symbols
It is helpful if students can response to the various levels through which the passage generates meaning by emplying an equally varied range of physcial symbols. Below is listed some techniques that might be employed:
 | Use a circle to higlight important words, phrases or sections in the text. |
 | Use an arrow to annotate words or phrases with comment or to connect particular details in the text. |
COLOUR | Use colour to group elements together, e.g. sensory diction or references to a particular character etc |
| Use brackets to groups lines or sections of the poem/extract together |
| Use highlighters to bring particular words into the foreground |
 | Use a box (perhaps at the bottom of the page) for key ideas, most important elements, possible lines of argument - a thesis etc |
| Place a question mark next to any detail or part of the text that initally presents challenge of some kind |
Examples
Below you will find two examples of the same annotated poem to show your students. They make use of some of the techniques identified above, and hopefully provide evidence of what annotation as a record of 'active reading' might mean.