[nabs-l] Working Closely with Text

[Brice Smith]

My required Academic Writing and Research instructor has asked the
class to read closely rather than widely; in other words, to dig deep
within a text instead of skim-reading or reading many documents.

One way to do this, according to the instructor, is to read the work
several times, and then read again, underlining, marking, and
highlighting important words, phrases, or sentences within the
document. By the time you're done, the printed document should have
many colors and markings through it.

Not only does this style deviate from what I'm used to (working with
and utilizing ten or twenty documents over a small amount of time),
but I'm a bit curious as to your experiences with marking and
underlining through a text. How do you read closely? You could
possibly do this with Braille, but only you could see it and that's
not the current goal of this exercise. Electronic text seems tedious,
but it might be a decent option. My teacher's suggestion was to use a
tape recorder, to read through the text and then speak important
phrases or words into the recorder -- but this seems distracting.

so how do you work closely with a text? When given a document, do you
highlight and mark through it, underlining key words and phrases? Or
do you simply read and hope to retain the information?

- Brice