On Test Essays

One thing that drew my attention was the question of what factors made reading harder. I tallied the responses as followed. The language of concerns actually varied little, so I was able to group them easily.
Factors that made reading harder:
Not being able to write/mark the texts: 5
Not being able to flip/reread: 4
Not being able to FLIP and WRITE: 6
None:1
Use outside resources: 1 (also flip/write)

PhD students use the reading technique of annotating texts. Some specify what they would underline (repeated words/phrases, important quotes, in the margins) and some noted it helps them to organize and make sense of the text.

As a student of English education, we learn about how to teach reading strategies and the importance of those strategies.They help struggling readers to focus on the text , organize it and connect on a personal level with it. They also push advanced readers to consider the text beyond a basic plot level, encouraging them to make intratextual connections, to other works and most of all, ask questions. Reading strategies can also be a scaffold for later class activities and assignments. This action is mirrored in the experiment by the need to mark the text, one particular reading strategy.The amount of people needing to annotate the text shows how much students rely on the strategy to succeed in reading. It is not safe to say that it helps the readers since we don't have any evidence, but we can say that the readers use it to succeed in close-reading. I'm not sure how much this relates to the brain imaging because we don't have images of annotating brains versus non-annotating brains. I think this is important because it shows that readers who are highly invested in reading (they are English PhD students after all) engage in the text by writing in it, they don't, except for one, just read it.

One criticism I have of the question is that it doesn't specify when the readers use the strategy; close reading or pleasure reading. We would assume it's during close reading but we can't say for sure. Does pleasure reading include annotation and physical reading strategies? Or is that solely a feature of close reading?

However, does the need to annotate justify the need to teach it in schools?

I myself used to use sticky notes to write down my thoughts, I've also learned about a color-coded system of sticky notes (blue for questions, pink for personal connections, green for figurative language etc...) graphic organizers and a code system to write in the actual text.

I would also be curious as to what subjects underline versus what the they brainstormed and then wrote.