Highlighters come in all sorts of colours – there is no need to go for the usual yellow. There’s orange, pink, blue and even green! However, the real question is this: are highlighters useful for studying?
It depends. Highlighters are said to be better for long-term benefits. Taking notes is generally more effective than highlighting, but there is no need to throw out the highlighters. Using highlighters on the notes would ensure the best studying experience rather than opting for one or the other.
Studying with a highlighter allows you to make those connections visually, not just mentally. And the more visual you can make things – aka, more concrete – the more likely you’ll remember them.A final reality to note is that studying with a highlighter can be helpful if you end goal isn’t to ace an exam. If your main goal is doing well in a class, studying with a highlighter is a less effective approach. You won’t get as much for your time as you would some other strategies.
But if you want to be able to reference these materials 10 years down the road, a highlighter may be just right. I often highlight when reading books. But I don’t do it for class. I do it for my memory in 20 years. When I open a book my highlights tell me what was important to me at the time.
You should use it, highlight the whole book if you feel like it!
Its really up to you how you want to highlight, if it works for you so be it, but do remember highlighting is only half the work. You have to make notes of all the things you highlight, that after you’ve actually read everything in the paragraph first so that you understand what the highlighted part refers to.
Highlighting just does what its said to do, highlight, but if you haven’t read the body, how will you understand what it is that’s being highlighted