Academic Highlighting

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Highlighting Worksheet--

Academic Highlighting

By Greg Loving, English Instructional Specialist

The Learning Center at Clermont College

The whole goal of reading academic material is never having to read it again. Highlighting helps you accomplish this goal. Once a text has been properly highlighted, the highlighted portions should give you a quick review of the main points without re-reading the entire text. You can review an article or chapter in few minutes, and a thousand-page book in a few hours. The following guidelines and exercises will help you to highlight efficiently, which will in turn help you learn the material and save study time.

Highlighting Guidelines

Time Karma: the more you give, the more you get.

In order to save time in the long run, you have to spend time up front. This means you can’t just breeze through your reading, highlight a few topic sentences and definitions, and think you have done your job. You have to make your brain work on the text in order to plant the ideas in there so that you will need to spend less time recalling the information.

Time in a Bottle: No Dumping!

Your brain is like a bottle. If you try to dump in information all at once, it just runs all over the place and doesn’t get in. Cramming can work short term because everything in the area gets wet, but it evaporates quickly and you’re left with a bottle of nothin’. Short amounts of study time spread over several days or weeks will help you more than a few long sessions. Unfortunately, this means you have to have discipline, start assignments in advance, and review regularly. I know. Discipline sucks. When it comes to reading, don’t read so long that you’re no longer paying attention. You know when that point comes—your eyes glaze over, you’re turning pages, and all of a sudden you have no idea what the book is about. You are wasting time if you’re trying to read now. Take a break. Stop studying or study something else. Come back to reading later.

Get the Big Picture

First, before you read at all, decide on your purpose for reading. Will you need this for a test—essay or definitions? A paper—research or journal? The type of information you will highlight depends on why you are reading. Second, do not highlight anything on the first read-through. Most beginning highlighters make the mistake of highlighting too much. You’ve seen the books where people have made this mistake—half of each page is pink. Highlighting doesn’t help if you’re re-reading half the book. Before you highlight anything, read the chapter or at least thoroughly skim it. Writers often repeat themselves. The repeated points are the most important, but there is no point highlighting the same point more than once. Depending on the book and your purpose for reading, you should be highlighting anything from 5% to 20% of the text, but no more. If you need to get more than 20% of the information, you need to use other study methods besides highlighting.

Snapshots

When you have read the entire chapter and have some idea of what’s going on, you are ready to go back and highlight. Read one paragraph. Highlight the main idea of that paragraph and any other essential information, such as definitions. (Remember, there may be nothing in a paragraph worth highlighting.) Only highlight examples and details if they are essential for your understanding. When you have finished one paragraph, go to the next and do the same thing. Try not to highlight the same idea more than once. Your goal is to have a summary of the entire chapter ready for you to review just by going back and glancing over your highlights.

You may also highlight in more than one color. The main reason to do this is so that you can easily identify different types of information. For instance, you might highlight main points in one color and examples in another color; or highlight arguments for and against a position in different colors. However you split up the information, just be consistent and not too complicated . As for the colors themselves, try to say away from darker colors that tend to obscure the text. You have to be able to read the words, not just see pretty colors.

Sentence Surgery

We already mentioned the main mistake people make when highlighting—they highlight too much. Another mistake, though, is highlighting too little. If you just highlight key words and phrases, when you come back and read your highlights, they will make no sense and you will have to resort to reading the whole text again to understand your highlights.

To avoid both highlighting too much and too little, here is the Goldilocks Rule of Highlighting: Highlight in whole sentences, but don’t necessarily highlight the writer’s whole sentences. This is one of the ways you make your brain work with the material. Start with the author’s whole sentences, but don’t highlight any words that are not essential to the main idea. Just because someone got a book published doesn’t mean they are a good writer. Use your highlighter to streamline a sentence, or to build one sentence out of two, three, or more of the writer’s sentences. Make the author’s ideas clear and simple. Be careful, though, that what you highlight represents what the author means.

When highlighting in this way, you are really writing your own sentences with the words that are already on the page. If you do this, when you come back to your highlights days, weeks, or months later, everything will flow in full sentence form and make sense. You will understand the main points of the book without re-reading all the text.

Double Check

When you are finished with the entire chapter or article, go back and review your highlights. Make sure all of the main ideas are accurate and in a form you can understand. Add any highlights you need. Try to keep everything in full sentence form. With some of the newfangled highlighters, you can even erase unnecessary highlights.

Start Saving Time

You have now put the necessary time in up front to start saving time. If you have highlighted a textbook, take a few minutes every day or so and review. If you have highlighted material for research, use your highlights to help you brainstorm or make up an outline. If all goes well, you will never have to read whatever it is again.

WARNING: Merely reading your highlighting is not a substitute for knowing the information. Highlighting only reminds you of what you should already know. Highlighting is a recall device, not a substitute for overall good study habits.

Examples

On the following pages are some different types of passages. Read each passage and highlight it, then turn the page and see examples of useful and not-so-useful highlighting. Of course, not everyone will highlight in exactly the same way. Since each person is building their own sentences for their own understanding, exact highlighting will vary. The important thing is getting the ideas straight, presented clearly, with no extra gunk.

One of the strengths of highlighting is its visual, eye-grabbing nature. Since copiers don’t reproduce highlighting very well, the highlighted sections on this worksheet will be underlined. Highlight these portions before you review them so that they quickly draw your eyes to the right spot. After all, that’s what highlighting is all about.[1]

Single Paragraph

As settlements grew and colonists prospered, Native Americans declined. Although Indians began to recover from the initial epidemics by mid-century, the settlers brought new diseases such as diphtheria, measles, and tuberculosis, as well as new outbreaks of smallpox, that took heavy tolls. New England’s Indian population was reduced from 125,000 in 1600 to 10,000 in 1675.[2]

Highlighting About Right

As settlements grew and colonists prospered, Native Americans declined. Although Indians began to recover from the initial epidemics by mid-century, the settlers brought new diseases such as diphtheria, measles, and tuberculosis, as well as new outbreaks of smallpox, that took heavy tolls. New England’s Indian population was reduced from 125,000 in 1600 to 10,000 in 1675.

Highlighting About Right, Examples Included

As settlements grew and colonists prospered, Native Americans declined. Although Indians began to recover from the initial epidemics by mid-century, the settlers brought new diseases such as diphtheria, measles, and tuberculosis, as well as new outbreaks of smallpox, that took heavy tolls. New England’s Indian population was reduced from 125,000 in 1600 to 10,000 in 1675.

Highlighting Too Little

As settlements grew and colonists prospered, Native Americans declined. Although Indians began to recover from the initial epidemics by mid-century, the settlers brought new diseases such as diphtheria, measles, and tuberculosis, as well as new outbreaks of smallpox, that took heavy tolls. New England’s Indian population was reduced from 125,000 in 1600 to 10,000 in 1675.

Highlighting Too Much

As settlements grew and colonists prospered, Native Americans declined. Although Indians began to recover from the initial epidemics by mid-century, the settlers brought new diseases such as diphtheria, measles, and tuberculosis, as well as new outbreaks of smallpox, that took heavy tolls. New England’s Indian population was reduced from 125,000 in 1600 to 10,000 in 1675.

Distorted Highlighting

As settlements grew and colonists prospered, Native Americans declined. Although Indians began to recover from the initial epidemics by mid-century, the settlers brought new diseases such as diphtheria, measles, and tuberculosis, as well as new outbreaks of smallpox, that took heavy tolls. New England’s Indian population was reduced from 125,000 in 1600 to 10,000 in 1675.

AnotherSingle Paragraph

In the 1940s W. Lloyd Warner and his colleagues used four main variables—occupation, education, income, and housing value—to classify Americans and their families into five groups: upper class, upper middle class, lower middle class, upper lower class, and lower lower class. Individuals high in occupational prestige, amount of education, income, and housing value ranked in the higher classes. Such people are also said to be high in socioeconomic status (SES); that is, they are viewed by others as upper-class persons and are influential and powerful in their communities. Conversely, people low in socioeconomic status are viewed as low in prestige and power.[3]

Highlighting Too Much

In the 1940s W. Lloyd Warner and his colleagues used four main variables—occupation, education, income, and housing value—to classify Americans and their families into five groups: upper class, upper middle class, lower middle class, upper lower class, and lower lower class. Individuals high in occupational prestige, amount of education, income, and housing value ranked in the higher classes. Such people are also said to be high in socioeconomic status (SES); that is, they are viewed by others as upper-class persons and are influential and powerful in their communities. Conversely, people low in socioeconomic status are viewed as low in prestige and power.

Highlighting About Right

In the 1940s W. Lloyd Warner and his colleagues used four main variables—occupation, education, income, and housing value—to classify Americans and their families into five groups: upper class, upper middle class, lower middle class, upper lower class, and lower lower class. Individuals high in occupational prestige, amount of education, income, and housing value ranked in the higher classes. Such people are also said to be high in socioeconomic status (SES); that is, they are viewed by others as upper-class persons and are influential and powerful in their communities. Conversely, people low in socioeconomic status are viewed as low in prestige and power.

Highlighting About Right, Details Included

In the 1940s W. Lloyd Warner and his colleagues used four main variables—occupation, education, income, and housing value—to classify Americans and their families into five groups: upper class, upper middle class, lower middle class, upper lower class, and lower lower class. Individuals high in occupational prestige, amount of education, income, and housing value ranked in the higher classes. Such people are also said to be high in socioeconomic status (SES); that is, they are viewed by others as upper-class persons and are influential and powerful in their communities. Conversely, people low in socioeconomic status are viewed as low in prestige and power.

Harder Paragraph

So far the most powerful human beings have still bowed worshipfully before the saint as the riddle of self-conquest and deliberate final renunciation. Why did they bow? In him—and as it were behind the question mark of his fragile and miserable appearance—they sensed the superior force that sought to test itself in such a conquest, the strength of the will in which they recognized and honored their own strength and delight in domination: they honored something in themselves when they honored the saint. Moreover, the sight of the saint awakened a suspicion in them: such an enormity of denial, of anti-nature will not have been desired for nothing, they said to and asked themselves. There may be a reason for it, some very great danger about which the ascetic, thanks to his secret comforters and visitors, might have inside information. In short, the powerful of the world learned a new fear before him; they sensed a new power, a strange, as yet unconquered enemy—it was the "will to power" that made them stop before the saint. They had to ask him——[4]

So far the most powerful human beings have still bowed worshipfully before the saint as the riddle of self-conquest and deliberate final renunciation. Why did they bow? In him—and as it were behind the question mark of his fragile and miserable appearance—they sensed the superior force that sought to test itself in such a conquest, the strength of the will in which they recognized and honored their own strength anddelight in domination: they honored something in themselves when they honored the saint. Moreover, the sight of the saint awakened a suspicion in them: such an enormity of denial, of anti-nature will not have been desired for nothing, they said to and asked themselves. There may be a reason for it, some very great danger about which the ascetic, thanks to his secret comforters and visitors, might have inside information. In short, the powerful of the world learned a new fear before him; they sensed a new power, a strange, as yet unconquered enemy—it was the "will to power" that made them stop before the saint. They had to ask him——

Notice here that I highlighted “they” on the same side of the page as “sensed,” instead of the “they” that technically went with “sensed.” This makes it easier for your eyes to travel from one to the other. Never be afraid to pick even one word from the middle of nowhere to tie phrases together.

Longer Passage

For many years researchers thought sleep occurred in the absence of enough sensory stimulation to keep the brain awake. Without stimuli, the brain was believed to just “slow down,” producing sleep. But researchers realized that sleep comes and goes without any obvious change in the amount of environmental stimulation. Theorists suggested we might have an internal “activating system” in the reticular formation that keeps the brain activated, or awake, all day (Hobson & McCarley, 1977). According to this theory, “fatigue” of the so-called activating system, or an accumulation of some “sleep toxin” that chemically depressed the activating system, induced sleep.

The contemporary view of sleep is radically different. As you have learned, the brain does not “stop” during sleep, but instead carries out complex processes that produce both REM and non-REM sleep behaviors. In fact, at the cellular level, many neurons fire faster during sleep than in a waking state.

The puzzle is not completely solved, but some of the major pieces of the brain’s machinery involved in sleep have been identified. Non-REM sleep, for example, requires participation of neurons in both the forebrain and the medulla. REM sleep is a period of especially intense brain activity, also requiring the cooperation of a number of brain systems. To read further about the brain’s role in sleep and learning, turn to Explorations in Psychology 3.

So far we have discussed normal aspects of sleep. Next we’ll see that sleep is not always predictable; there are many ways sleep can go awry.[5]

For many years researchers thought sleep occurred in the absence of enough sensory stimulation to keep the brain awake. Without stimuli, the brain was believed to just “slow down,” producing sleep. But researchers realized that sleep comes and goes without any obvious change in the amount of environmental stimulation. Theorists suggested we might have an internal “activating system” in the reticular formation that keeps the brain activated, or awake, all day (Hobson & McCarley, 1977). According to this theory, “fatigue” of the so-called activating system, or an accumulation of some “sleep toxin” that chemically depressed the activating system, induced sleep.