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Active Reading and Annotating

Mortimer Adler argues that annotating texts while reading provides significant cognitive benefits and enhances comprehension. He asserts that annotating keeps the reader more alert and engaged, as it requires active thinking. It also improves recall because the physical act of writing aids memory retention. Furthermore, annotating preserves a record of one's thoughts and allows ideas to be revisited later. While it may slow reading speed, Adler believes intelligent reading requires understanding content fully rather than speed. Annotating supports reading differently according to a work's value.

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36 views

Active Reading and Annotating

Mortimer Adler argues that annotating texts while reading provides significant cognitive benefits and enhances comprehension. He asserts that annotating keeps the reader more alert and engaged, as it requires active thinking. It also improves recall because the physical act of writing aids memory retention. Furthermore, annotating preserves a record of one's thoughts and allows ideas to be revisited later. While it may slow reading speed, Adler believes intelligent reading requires understanding content fully rather than speed. Annotating supports reading differently according to a work's value.

Uploaded by

Sam Rizzo
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Close, Active Reading

True readers are not passive receptacles.


Approach reading as a dialogue. “Listen” closely and reply with your
own questions, observations, and insights.

“And that is exactly what reading a book should be: a conversation between you
and the author” (Mortimer Adler, “How to Mark a Book”).
Always read with a pen in hand.
Annotating
How to Mark a Book

By Mortimer J. Adler, Ph.D.

From The Saturday Review of Literature, July 6, 1941

You know you have to read "between the lines" to get the most out of anything. I want
to persuade you to do something equally important in the course of your reading. I want to
persuade you to write between the lines. Unless you do, you are not likely to do the most
efficient kind of reading.

I contend, quite bluntly, that marking up a book is not an act of mutilation but of love.
You shouldn't mark up a book which isn't yours….
Annotating helps to keep you awake.
“Why is marking up a book indispensable to reading? First, it
keeps you awake. (And I don't mean merely conscious; I mean
awake…. If reading is to accomplish anything more than
passing time, it must be active. You can't let your eyes glide
across the lines of a book and come up with an understanding
of what you have read” (Adler).
“In the second place; reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tends
to express itself in words, spoken or written. The marked book is usually
the thought-through book.... If, when you've finished reading a book, the
pages are filled with your notes, you know that you read actively” (Adler).
Annotating enhances recall.

“But, you may ask, why is writing necessary? Well, the physical act of writing, with
your own hand, brings words and sentences more sharply before your mind and
preserves them better in your memory. To set down your reaction to important
words and sentences you have read, and the questions they have raised in your
mind, is to preserve those reactions and sharpen those questions” (Adler).
Researchers at the Norwegian Center for Learning Environment and Behavioural Research in
Education found that reading handwritten text activates different parts of the brain than reading
typed text.

Your memory of handwritten words is tied to the movements required to make each letter. This
might be what helps the memory of what we’ve written hang around in our brains a bit longer.
Meanwhile, pressing buttons on a keyboard activates fewer areas of the brain, so we forget what
we’ve typed faster.

So, when you write by hand, you actually give your brain’s encoding process a boost. Encoding
refers to the process of sending information to your brain’s hippocampus, where the decision is
made to either store the information long-term or let it go. If you write something by hand, all that
complex sensory information increases the chances the knowledge will be stored for later.

In short, writing by hand forces your brain to process information in a more detailed way, which
helps you successfully load that information into your memory.

https://www.lifesavvy.com/19204/why-you-remember-things-better-when-you-write-them-down/#
:~:text=If%20you%20write%20something%20by,that%20information%20into%20your%20memory
.
Annotating preserves an ongoing record of
your thoughts.
“The margins (top as bottom, and well as side), the end-papers, the very space
between the lines, are all available. They aren't sacred. And, best of all, your marks and
notes become an integral part of the book and stay there forever. You can pick up the
book the following week or year, and there are all your points of agreement,
disagreement, doubt, and inquiry. It's like resuming an interrupted conversation with
the advantage of being able to pick up where you left off” (Adler)
But won’t annotating slow down my reading?

“Or, you may say that this business of marking books is going to slow up your
reading. It probably will. That's one of the reasons for doing it. Most of us have
been taken in by the notion that speed of reading is a measure of our intelligence.
There is no such thing as the right speed for intelligent reading. Some things should
be read quickly and effortlessly and some should be read slowly and even
laboriously. The sign of intelligence in reading is the ability to read different things
differently according to their worth. In the case of good books, the point is not to
see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through
you -- how many you can make your own” (Adler).
Bread Crumb Trail

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