Does underlining help you study better?

If we were to take the notes of a university student, the most likely would be to find books, articles and other documents underlined with all kinds of colors Florescent: yellow, green, orange, pink, blue... The range of colors that we can find in stores is wide, colors that are in wide demand in the world educational.

Highlighting is one of the most used techniques among the student population, especially in high school, high school and university. The premise behind this is that underlining key ideas makes them stand out and thus makes it easier to both review and memorize those ideas.

But really, Does underlining help you study better? Next we will see if this study strategy really serves or not to better establish the agenda.

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Is underlining an effective measure to study better?

It does not fail. If we go to the nearest library and take a walk through it, we will see all kinds of students with their notes in the table, books and other documents that in addition to having the odd annotation will also have a wide range of colors. There are flirty students who do it in pastel colors, others prefer the more garish fluorescent classics and some prefer to go simple and underline with pencil or pen. Be that as it may, students, almost instinctively, need to underline their notes.

Underlining is one of the most used techniques among students of all educational levels, especially in secondary (ESO), pre-university (baccalaureate) and university. They do not do it just because, naturally: the objective is to facilitate learning and memorization of content, highlighting ideas key and make it easier to use them during the review without having to read the entire page from top to bottom. under.

Due to its popularity, there are many researches in educational sciences that have tried to find out if underlining really helps to study better. This strategy has been studied both in a laboratory context, controlling all possible variables, and in real situations in the classroom, that is, field work. Both types of research have coincided in comparing underlining with other strategies also used by the student population and reading without underlining.

Scientific investigation

Of the many investigations that have focused on studying the effectiveness of underlining as a study technique, we have a classic one, carried out in 1974 by Robert L. Fowler and Anne S. Barker. In short, His study involved giving a 10-page text to his students, who were divided into three groups, each one of them with one of the following 3 conditions:

• Read without underlining
• Read underlining
• Read already underlined text

The students read the text to each other and did what the researchers told them. Those in condition 1 simply read, without underlining. Those in 2 had to read the text underlining it on their own and, as expected, each one underlined what he considered relevant, which could vary from person to person. Those in 3 received a text that was already with the key ideas underlined.

The next session of the experiment was carried out after one week and consisted of performing the test in which they were asked the contents that were explained in the 10-page document. Before the exam, the students had the opportunity to review about 10 minutes using the same document that they used the previous time, that is, those of the 1 received the same document without underlining, those of 2 received the one that they themselves had colored and those of 3 received the document with the ideas underlined.

When comparing the results of the test answered by the students of the three conditions, the researchers found no statistically significant differences between these conditions. As surprising as it may seem, other investigations in the same line as this or that took inspiration from her had similar results, implying at first that underlining does not it serves.

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Is it really useless?

However, to assume at the outset that underlining does not have any benefit for the study is a rash and shallow interpretation. Although in a somewhat subtle way, having actively underlined or received an already underlined document it was related to better performance compared to just reading the text, which suggests that there is really something to underline.

When we see an underlined word of a different color on a black and white page, it is inevitable to notice it. This word stands out above the others because it does not have the same visual characteristics, that is, perceptual, as the rest of the text that is not colored. This word will have caught our attention and even if we have not made the effort we will remember it more easily than the rest of the text.

This is the Von Restorff or isolation effect, and occurs when information stands out semantically or sensory. By standing out, it is more likely to be remembered compared to the rest of the information that was more homogeneous in these two respects. For example, reading the following two word lists and waiting 5 minutes, which words are we most likely not to forget?

• List 1: apple, pear, banana, kiwi, plum, orangutan, watermelon, melon, orange, mango
• List 2: car, bus, plane, motorcycle, bicycle, boat, yacht, train, subway, railway

Taking these two examples we can see that the isolation effect is going to occur by making us remember the word “Orangutan” from list 1, which stands out semantically, and the word “motorcycle”, which stands out perceptually. The first one does it because unlike the rest of the list it is not a fruit, but an animal, and the second stands out because it is in bold and underlined.

With this understood, what would happen in list 2 if it were presented in the following way? If it were the first time they taught it to us, what words do we think would be the most likely to be remembered ?:

List 2: car, bus, plane, motorcycle, bicycle, boat, yacht, train, subway, railway

Here all the words are underlined and in bold, plus they all refer to means of transport. None of them stands out because they all have the same characteristics. In principle, all of them will involve the same cognitive effort when trying to memorize and remember them, since none by itself has any particularly striking aspect.

This is what happens when notes are underlined. When specific words in the text are underlined, it is more likely that, when reviewing, we will quickly notice them because they attract attention for being visually different from the rest of the page. As they have caught our attention, we remember them better. However, If the entire page or almost the entire page is underlined, what will attract the most attention in visual terms is going to be white, which may well be the margins or a single word that we have not colored. This would not produce the Von Restorff effect and therefore underlining would not have been of much use to us.

If you underline well, that is, only what are ideas and keywords, you are speeding up the study process. When reviewing, key ideas will be used and a student strategy that has proven to be one of the most effective can be put into practice: evocation. By forcing themselves to remember the contents, students put into practice something that they are going to have What to do on the day of the exam, which is nothing more than explaining on the sheet of paper what is being asked.

If they have the key ideas indicated in the book, when they put the evocation into practice, in case they do not remember the contents they will simply have than to go to the page of what they do not remember, read the underlined and try to evoke it again, instead of having to read the entire page and lose weather. Having underlined the key ideas appropriately and trying to remember them out loud makes underlining yes help to study better, since it will facilitate its memorization and subsequent evocation.

How to make underlining useful to us?

Considering the above, it is clear that underlining, although it is not as powerful a technique as evocation, if done well, it can help us in the study. For underlining to be useful, it must be done well, that is, underlining the key ideas and avoiding make the most classic mistake that all students have made more than once: painting the entire page with the highlighter. It is not that the more underlined, the more we will learn, but rather that the fewer things will attract our attention and the more difficult it will be for us to find the key ideas.

Then let's see some tips to underline well, making this strategy really profitable in our studio and without abusing the markers.

1. Do a first reading

The first thing many students do as soon as they open the book is to arm themselves with their highlighter, start reading the syllabus, and underline as they go. This is the most widespread error among the student population, and the one that makes underlining a total waste of time.

In order to underline the key ideas, you must first know what they are, and this we cannot know in the first reading. Although we go paragraph by paragraph, it is useless if we do not have a global idea of ​​what the subject is about. As we do not know and we have not read all the contents, our filter of things to take into account is very broad, letting go of any idea that we do not know is practically all.

It is therefore very important to make a first reading without underlining. We must take our time and read the whole subject in depth, without painting the pages. As we read, we will connect some ideas with others, establishing which ones are more important and which ones are simpler or we already knew each other before.

2. Take an active reading

Although some say that it is enough for them to make a first reading as a contact, yes that it is important to do a second reading. In this one, the subject will sound a little more familiar to us, since we will remember something from the first reading. Doing an active reading with some internalized ideas can allow us to better establish which ideas are important, in addition to relating them more easily to each other.

It is during this second reading that it is especially advisable to look at details that, perhaps, during the first we have skipped or we have not paid much attention because it is more of a visual type than written. Now is a good time to try to understand images, graphs, maps, figures, or any unwritten elements that make sense of the text.

3. Identify relevant information

Once the first two readings have been made It is necessary to identify the information that is essential for us to learn for the exam, that which is relevant and that we are going to underline. This is really the time of greatest reflection of the review, since we are making an active cognitive effort to discern between the importance of the straw.

4. Underline

Now is the time to color the book. We highlight the most important information and concepts after having identified them, such as titles, concepts, definitions, dates and other content of the topic. It is very important not to underline more than 3 words in a row or more than 5 in the same paragraph, since we run the risk of ruining the Von Restorff effect as we have mentioned before.

What we can do is combine underline formats. For example, we can underline the name of an idea (p. eg, Spanish romanticism) and underline all its definition, mark it with a square bracket or indicate it with an arrow. As long as almost the entire page is not colored and the key ideas stand out visually, we will be doing a good underlining.

Finally is to comment on the issue of colors. It is a very good idea to use several different colors, especially more than 4 since this way we can identify different types of key content using our own color code (p. e.g. yellow = key idea, blue = author, green = important date, pink = category ...) It is preferable to use pastel tone colors rather than fluorescents, especially if we are going to spend many hours studying since these second colors are less comfortable for our sight.

Resume

Although scientific evidence has pointed out that there are no statistically significant differences between underlining and just reading a text, it must be said that there are certain nuances in it. It is not the same to underline without knowing what is being underlined than to do it after having read, identified, selected and pointed out the key ideas. When reviewing, if only the key ideas have been marked, the view will go to what is important, paying more attention and learning it more easily.

As long as it's done properly, underlining is a useful technique. Combined with evocation, that is, trying to remember what we have learned, visually pointing out what is important helps to study better since In case we are not clear about something, it will be enough to look for it in the book, re-read the important content and try again to see if it has remained in our memory.

Bibliographic references:

• Bell, K. E., & Limber, J. AND. (2009). Reading skill, textbook marking, and course performance. Literacy Research and Instruction, 49, 56–67.
• Credé, M., & Kuncel, N. R. (2008). Study habits, skills, and attitudes: The third pillar supporting collegiate academic performance. Perspectives on psychological science, 3 (6), 425-453.
• Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students ’learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14 (1), 4-58.
• Fowler, R. L., & Barker, A. S. (1974). Effectiveness of highlighting for retention of text material. Journal of Applied Psychology, 59 (3), 358.
• Nist, S., & Hogrebe, M. (1987). The role of underlining and annotating in remembering textual information. Reading Research and Instruction, 27, 13–25.
• Ruiz-Martin, H. (2020) How do we learn? A scientific approach to learning and teaching. Spain, Graó.
• Ruiz-Martin, H. (2020) Learning to learn: Improve your ability to learn by discovering how your brain learns. Spain, Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial.
• Kelley, M. R. & Nairme, J. S. (2001) von Restorff Revisited: Isolation, generation and memory for order. Journal of Experimental Psychology; 27(1): 54-66.