How many times have you highlighted an entire document while you were studying? Perhaps, you’ve done it many times, and you know how frustrating it can be. 

When you have highlighted everything, what’s the point? The main point of highlighting is to focus on the essential information to help you better gauge the topic. In this post, we’ll discuss highlighting and how you can make it work to make studying more effective for you. 

Highlighting: What Is It?

Highlighting is a study strategy that helps you become more efficient. It’s a way to extract the most important information from a text. When studying, you need to mark down the important points. So, when highlighting, keep in mind these things: 

• The purpose
• The key categories of content you need
• The process of refining the information
• How you can break a boring pattern

So, you’re also probably wondering about the advantages and disadvantages of highlighting. Here are some of them: 

Pros:

• It’s quicker
• It makes the text more visually appealing
• It draws your attention to the highlighted word, which makes it easier to read
  

Cons: 

• It can easily turn into a mindless action
• Students tend to highlight more than retain information
• They may not be enough to recall information

Today, there is now an easier way to highlight, which is doing it online. There are now a lot of online highlighting tools that you can use, which will help you store more study notes along the way. 

On the other hand, doing it “offline,” which also means the traditional way, is available any time, even when you don’t have the internet. Plus, there are a lot of cool highlighters today you can choose from that can make the experience more fun and exciting. 

Highlighting vs. Note-Taking: Which Is Better? 

Note-taking is usually another method that other students prefer over highlighting. It takes out the main points, but the process includes annotating or rewriting them on a new piece of paper. For some students, this can be more time-consuming, which is why highlighting is preferred by many. 

There is no right or wrong answer when choosing between the two because it all comes down to your preference and which is more effective for you. 

Highlighting the Right Way

If you’re more comfortable with highlighting and think that it helps you study and retain information easily, you need to make sure you know how to do it properly. 

The first thing to do is to read the content carefully and stay focused on the topic. Next, connect the new information with facts you’re aware of. 

Now, you need to place the new data in a broader context and draw the main themes. After this, you need to define your own system, such as your underlining styles. 

Conclusion

Choosing a study method requires you to test several ways to find one that will work for you. In this case, if highlighting is an effective method for you, you need to make sure that you do it properly. Otherwise, your efforts will be futile in the end. If you would like to know more about studying techniques, it’s best to enlist the help of a tutor. A tutor can help you grasp concepts better and even offer best practices to help you retain information.

Work with a tutor you can be comfortable with! Young Growth Academy is an HSC tutoring in Penrith that can help students study more efficiently. Contact us today, and let’s study together!