Yay or Nay? – Essay Writing Tips and Help

Do you recommend the use of study guides or annotations for difficult texts? By difficult texts I mean novels, plays, poems, and non-fiction. While guides and annotations can be useful, they also tend to limit a reader’s involvement with the text. They do so by prescribing particular approaches or interpretations, and this tends to generate uniform, and often lackluster, responses from students. It would be best to prescribe materials that only feature essential annotations, ones that do not interfere with students’ engagement. Sometimes students tend to read only the annotations or discussion points listed in study guides because they know they can get more than just passing grades by doing so.

An alternative would be to ask students to note down references they do not get or passages they do not understand. One can then look up and discuss these references as well as break down complex passages through collective reading. This will not only limit students’ unhealthy reliance on guides and annotations but will also help them develop an ethos of reading.