Perusall Annotation Guide — ENG 511 Fall 2026

When Annotations Are Due

Tuesday sessions

Before Tuesday class

Tuesday readings annotated before you arrive

Annotations for Tuesday's seminar readings are due before class begins — not the night before, not by end of day. They are how you prepare to lead or participate in discussion. Coming in without annotations means coming in unprepared.

Thursday sessions

Before Thursday class

Thursday readings annotated before you arrive

Thursday workshop readings follow the same rule. These are often shorter or more applied, but they still require thoughtful annotation before class. The workshop activities are designed to extend what you've already started thinking about in Perusall.

Weeks with major assignments due: In weeks where an assignment is due (Weeks 3, 6, 7, 10, 13, 16), select one reading for your full annotation and integrate references to the additional readings into your assignment work. Prof. Cole will indicate this in the Moodle module for that week. You do not need to fully annotate every reading in heavy assignment weeks.

Anatomy of a Strong Annotation

Each annotation you leave in Perusall should contain most or all of these elements. You don't need to write them as separate labeled sections — weave them together naturally in your comment threads.

Part 1

Highlight a Passage — and Say Why

3–6 per reading

Highlight any passage that makes you stop — because it's insightful, because it troubles you, because it contradicts something you believe, or because you don't fully understand it. Then write a comment explaining what caught your attention. Don't just highlight silently.

Strong Example

"Berlin writes that 'all rhetorics are in some sense epistemic' (p. 166) — I keep turning this over. If all rhetoric makes claims about what can be known, does that mean current-traditional pedagogy isn't just pedagogically neutral? It's actually making an epistemological argument about what counts as truth in a student's writing?"

Too thin — avoid this

"This is an interesting quote." / Highlighting without any comment.

💡 You don't need to fully understand a passage to annotate it. Confusion is a legitimate annotation. "I don't understand what Berlin means by X, and here's what I thought he meant before this line..." is excellent work.

Part 2

Brief Summary — In Your Own Words

1 per reading

Somewhere in your annotations, distill the reading's central argument in 3–5 sentences. This can be at the beginning or end of your thread. The key constraint: no direct quotes. This is a comprehension and synthesis exercise — write it as if explaining the reading to a fellow grad student who hasn't read it yet.

Strong Example

"Fulkerson argues that composition in 2005 has no unified theoretical center — it's been pulled in three directions simultaneously: expressivist, rhetorical, and critical. He's not neutral about this; he clearly prefers a return to rhetorical focus. What I find most useful is his method: instead of arguing for one theory, he maps what everyone else is implicitly assuming."

Too thin — avoid this

"Fulkerson talks about different theories of composition and how they've changed."

Part 3

Genuine Questions

2–3 per reading

These should be questions you actually can't answer — not rhetorical questions, not "I wonder if..." softeners on claims you're actually making. Strong questions open something up rather than closing it down. They're the questions you want the class to work on together.

Strong Examples

"Inoue positions labor-based grading as antiracist practice, but I'm wondering whether the labor framework can still reproduce racial inequities if the kinds of labor valued are themselves culturally specific. Does 'showing up' mean different things for different students?"

"Pratt's 'contact zone' feels utopian — she describes 'autoethnographic texts' as sites of empowerment, but what happens when those texts are graded? How does assessment change the power dynamics of the contact zone?"

Too thin — avoid this

"I wonder if this applies to all writing classes?" / "Is this still relevant today?"

Part 4

Personal Reflection or Connection

1 per reading

Connect the reading to something — your teaching experience, your own education, another course reading, a teaching scenario you're imagining. This is the part where the theory meets your life. It can be brief, but it should be honest. You can disagree with the reading here too.

Strong Examples

"Reading Anzaldúa alongside my experience TAing a first-year writing course last spring, I kept thinking about a student who consistently code-switched in her essays — beautiful, precise writing that my supervisor kept marking as 'unclear.' I didn't have the vocabulary to push back then. Now I do."

"This connects to Berlin's typology from Week 2 in a way I didn't expect — Inoue's labor-based framework seems to be doing what Berlin called 'social-epistemic rhetoric' at the assessment level. I'm not sure if that's a strength or a limitation."

💡 Disagreement counts. "I think Freire's framework breaks down when applied to required writing courses because..." is a strong reflection. You're not required to agree with the readings.

Full Annotation Example

Here's what a complete annotation looks like in Perusall — a highlighted passage with a comment thread that weaves together all four elements. This is from a hypothetical reading of Sommers (1982).

"Students make revisions on a quantitative, rather than qualitative, level. Students look for discrete surface errors — a missing comma or period, a misspelled word, a dangling modifier — and once they have corrected these problems, they assume that the text is revised." — Sommers, p. 381

Your annotation thread Quote + Analysis Question Connection

Highlighting this because it hits uncomfortably close to how I was taught to revise — I can remember being told to "clean up" a paper before resubmitting, and understanding that as fixing typos. Sommers is diagnosing a failure that I lived through.

The broader argument seems to be that students are imitating a surface model of revision because that's the model teachers implicitly reward. We say "revise," but our comments (and Sommers documents this) are often about correctness, not meaning. So students are actually reading us pretty accurately.

❓ If students' revision practices mirror what their teachers model and reward, does this mean changing revision practices requires changing assessment first? That would flip the usual pedagogical sequence — instead of teaching revision and then assessing it, you'd need to redesign the rubric before the instruction would change. How does this connect to what Inoue argues about grades shaping behavior?

Also want to bring this to Tuesday's discussion: I've seen this described as a "school genre" problem — students learn what revision means in school, and it means surface-level fixes. But what's the alternative model? Sommers gestures at it but doesn't quite give us one here.

What Counts as Strong — and What Doesn't

Perusall uses an algorithm to track engagement depth. Prof. Cole also reviews annotations directly. Here's what the evaluation looks for.

Level	What It Looks Like
Excellent	Annotations demonstrate careful reading: passages are chosen for specific reasons, comments analyze rather than summarize, questions are genuinely open, reflection connects reading to teaching experience or course themes. Shows evidence of rereading and reconsideration. Responds substantively to at least one peer annotation.
Satisfactory	Meets the numerical requirements (3–6 quotes, summary, 2–3 questions, reflection). Comments are relevant and engaged but may stay at the surface of what the passage says rather than what it implies or how it challenges assumptions. Questions are present but may be answerable rather than genuinely open.
Developing	Annotations are present but thin: highlights without substantive comments, summary that paraphrases too closely, questions that could be answered by re-reading the text, reflection that is generic ("this is relevant to teaching"). Labor is technically completed but doesn't show deep engagement.
Missing	No annotations, or annotations submitted after class has met. Late annotations are accepted but affect the labor record for the week — reach out to Prof. Cole if life circumstances are a factor before the deadline, not after.

Discussion Leader Role

Starting Week 2, students take turns leading Tuesday seminar discussions. Leading doesn't mean presenting — it means facilitating. Your job is to open up the conversation, not to give a lecture.

📋 Before Class (in Perusall)

Annotate the Tuesday reading(s) more thoroughly than usual — your annotations should model the depth you want from the class
Post a brief summary of the reading's core argument as a Perusall thread — this becomes a shared anchor for the discussion
Post at least one discussion-starter thread with a question you're genuinely curious about, not one with a predetermined answer
Respond to at least two peer annotations in Perusall — this signals to classmates that their thinking is being read and valued

🗣 During Class

Open with a 5-minute summary of the reading — grounded in your Perusall summary, addressed to the group
Pose your Perusall question to the class as the first discussion prompt — you've already given everyone time to think about it
Guide, don't lecture. Your role is to make space for everyone's voice, especially quieter members
Connect the conversation to Thursday's workshop when possible
Wrap up with a synthesis: what's unresolved, what's been clarified

💬 Things That Work

"Can someone build on what [name] just said?"
"I noticed in the Perusall annotations that several of us got stuck on X — let's start there."
"What's the most uncomfortable implication of this reading for your teaching?"
Calling on people by name to invite quieter voices in
Returning to the text when discussion gets too abstract

🚫 Things to Avoid

Reading your summary from notes without making eye contact
Asking yes/no questions
Letting the same 2–3 people dominate the discussion
Answering your own questions before anyone else can respond
Going over time — leave space for Prof. Cole's synthesis and bridge to Thursday

Frequently Asked Questions

Q How long should my annotations be total?

There's no word count requirement, but in practice a strong annotation thread runs 300–500 words across all your comments. Shorter is fine if each comment is substantive. Longer is fine if you're genuinely working through something. Perusall flags annotations it considers too short automatically — if you're getting flags, your comments probably need more development, not more quantity.

Q Should I respond to other students' annotations?

Yes — especially as the discussion leader, but for everyone, responding to at least one peer annotation per reading is encouraged. This is how Perusall becomes a pre-class conversation rather than parallel monologues. Short responses are fine: "This is exactly what I was puzzling over — I'd push further and ask..." or "I read this differently — I thought Berlin meant..."

Q I submitted my annotation late. Does it still count?

Late annotations are accepted and will count toward your labor record, but they don't count toward the class's collective preparation for that session — because they weren't there when everyone needed them. If you have circumstances affecting timely submission, contact Prof. Cole before the deadline. Patterns of late submission without communication will factor into your final labor assessment.

Q The reading is really hard to understand. What do I annotate?

Annotate your confusion directly and specifically. "I don't understand what Flower & Hayes mean by 'long-term memory' here — is this literal cognitive science, or a metaphor for something else?" is a strong annotation. It tells your peers where you're stuck and invites the class to work on it together. The worst thing to do with a difficult text is to annotate only the parts you understood.

Q Can I annotate a PDF or book chapter I downloaded?

All readings for this course are loaded directly into Perusall — you should not need to download anything separately. If a reading isn't appearing in your Perusall course, email Prof. Cole at kkcole2@ncsu.edu and do not wait until class day.

Q How do I access Perusall?

Through the Moodle course page or directly at app.perusall.com. Your course join code will be distributed in the Week 1 Moodle module. If you have trouble accessing a reading, reach out to Prof. Cole — do not wait until the annotation is due.