Every student has experienced walking into a classroom and seeing “read and annotate chapter 2” on the homework board. While some students remain unbothered by this task, others immediately groan.

The ultimate question stands: should students be required to annotate?

To begin, we must approach the question on whether the Louisville student body enjoys annotating their books. I personally am not a fan of annotating, but based on a survey I sent out, the results were very close. 50.4 percent replied that they do not like annotating, while the other 49.6 percent answered that they do enjoy it.

Isabelle Balderama ’24 commented that annotating is “uncomfortable and significantly increases the time it would typically take to read” and that annotating “decreases the enjoyability of reading.”

On the other hand, Madison Regala ’23 responded to the question on whether she likes annotating with:

“Yes, because it allows me to better understand the information and not to mention, it's just fun making your notes all nice and pretty.”

The next question asked on the survey was whether the Louisville student body finds annotating their books helpful for school. These results were not as close as the first question with 71.5 percent responding that they do find annotating helpful, while the other 28.5 percent, myself among them, do not find the task helpful.

“When using annotations for school, the notes help me remember my analysis of the passages and key points from the book” stated Helena Hickambottom ’23.

Helena’s response mirrors multiple other responses to the survey, concluding that annotating can be helpful for in-class and essay analysis. This is a very popular opinion among the student body who voted like Helena.

On the other hand, Jade Calabria ’22 answered that annotating her book “takes more time and interrupts reading.”

A handful of students agreed with Jade in the survey that annotating their books not only takes up a large amount of time, but it also breaks their concentration. In their opinion, annotating makes it more difficult to follow the storyline of the book because of the constant interruptions that come from writing little notes.

The students at Louisville seem to have a divided opinion on annotating. It is clear that annotating is incredibly helpful to many students, while entirely unhelpful to others.

Additionally, I spoke with our very own Mrs. Hetrick - chairperson of the English Department - to gather why annotating is an important practice in our English classes.

“Annotating helps sustain a close attention to the text and makes you notice details that you wouldn’t notice otherwise,” said Mrs. Hetrick. “Mainly, annotating helps develop critical thinking skills and comprehension skills.”

Although I am not a fan of annotating, requiring annotations during the first two years at Louisville allows students to learn important critical thinking and comprehension skills, as Mrs. Hetrick said, and whether or not annotating is helpful to them. Therefore, I propose that annotating should continue to be required for freshmen and sophomore English classes, but should become optional for junior and senior English classes.

I shared my proposal with Mrs. Hetrick and her argument supported annotating for all four years because of two main concerns.

“My first concern is if students don’t annotate then they will not be able to gather evidence easily when writing an essay,” stated Ms. Hetrick. “Making annotating optional will also make it difficult to determine if students are actually reading the book or listening to an audiobook.”

Maybe having annotating be optional for juniors and seniors might not be a perfect solution, but hopefully another compromise can be made in the near future.