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What are the pros and cons of highlighting?
The Pros
- Takes less time than note taking
- Charts and graphs from text readily available
The Cons
- Very easy to do badly; can fool you into thinking you're learning material when what you're really doing is colouring
- Tendency to mark too much to avoid missing something important; experts say highlight 10-15%; students usually highlight 70-80%
- Because fragments of sentences are highlighted, tendency is to read whole sentence for complete meaning and so most of the book ends up being re-read
- Necessary to study for tests from heavy, clumsy textbook
- Difficult to integrate with lecture notes
- Textbook ends up looking very used and reduces resale value
What are the pros and cons of notetaking?
The Pros
- Because it's time consuming, encourages you to be concise and more selective of important information
- Information is in point form but still grammatically complete
- Provides a portable, easy-to-manage study tool — text not often needed for studying
- Condensed study notes can be made in margins as you go, saving time when preparing for exams
- Easy to integrate text and lecture notes if done on looseleaf paper
The Cons
- Time-consuming
- Tendency to copy text rather than take notes in your own words
