This website says highlight while you read (step 3):
http://www.howtostudy.com/read-text-slowly-before-and-after-class/
This one says read first then reread and highlight (step 5):
http://www.wikihow.com/Study-a-Textbook
Both say to skim/preview the chapter first.
This site says skim/preview, then take a few notes as you read the whole chapter, and avoid heavy underlining at all stages:
There is no ‘correct’ way. Whatever method you find most helpful is the right method.
What Cunctator says.
I found highlighted text horribly distracting; most of my female classmates loved their hilites; most of the guys used different-colored ink from the start but no hiliters. I culled my classnotes into mini-notes (the very act of “distilling” and writing helped me a lot more than re-reading); my BFF would read things a zillion times, some of them out loud (Blaancaaaaa! The rest of us are trying to study too, shut up!); other people trusted notes copied from other students rather than their own or liked to read their own as well as copies from half the class. Some people do better in the library, some in a silent room, some prefer having unimportant noise in the background.
Whichever works.
On that specific advice, I wouldn’t highlight in advance like the first quote says. If you do that and the professor’s notions of what’s important differ from yours, you will end up with a book that looks like it’s been used as a coloring book by a 3yo. Read in advance, yes. Highlight in advance, no.
Yeah I’ve heard a few times that reading it out loud really helps. I walk 30 minutes to the subway everyday so I might start reading the notecards outloud I make while I walk. I’ve also heard reading the notes onto audio in your own voice and then hearing it played back helps.
it depends on what you’re learning and your learning style. sometimes factual stuff like math and science can’t easily be interrupted, the facts need to all fit to understand it.
don’t highlight as you read.
read through, maybe only noting (not in the book on a piece of paper the page and paragraph) things that are confusing, if you make notes the go back and reread the paragraph or section from the start.
once you’ve read and have an understanding then highlight or take notes of what’s important. if you highlight before understanding then you likely will over mark the text, then later it will just be a distraction.
Highlighters are a good way of categorising things. For example, green for factors that increase stability, yellow for factors that decrease stability. Whatever your categories might be.
Highlighting converts bland text to a visual image which for many people is easy to memorise or process.
Highlighting emphasises things (obviously). This is my main reason for not highlighting most of the time. I do not always want the same thing emphasised when I examine a text. It limits my scope and rail-roads me down a thought process I have been before.
And I am sure there is a whole lot more that might be said about highlighting.
The point is to ask what is it that you expect the highlighting to do and question whether it is actually doing it.If it works, then great. If it does not work, then do something else. If your professor suggests a particular approach then by all means consider it. But remember that you are the one learning and you should choose an approach that matches both your learning style and what you are trying to achieve.
Echoing the others who say to use whatever works for your learning style and needs. I tutored one student whose biggest difficulty was recognizing what a homework problem was asking for and stopping when she got to that point, so I recommended to her that at the start of the problem, she highlight what the question is asking for. Another student I tutored, his biggest problem was keeping track of units, and even if his learning style were such that highlighting would help in general, there’s really nothing to highlight to address that need, so I didn’t recommend it.
Semi-related hijack: what do you guys call the process of turning a “word problem” into equations? Many of my students had problems with that but they didn’t seem to know a shorter way to describe that process (Spanish has a verb for it, plantear); I’ve never found a dictionary which gave a translation for that specific meaning.
It’s another thing with which neither highlighters nor notes would be particularly helpful - and reading the problem out loud in the middle of an exam doesn’t sound like a good idea.
When I was tutoring maths, admittedly a long time ago, I simply used to say “write/put that into algebraic form/equations”.
I’ve occasionally heard people use the verb ‘algebrise’.