In-Text Citations in Academic Writing

Analyzing In-Text Citations in an Academic Piece of Writing

            This paper reviews the use of in-text citations in an article written by Iida (2010) in terms of whether the rules prescribed by the American Psychological Association (APA, 2010) have been followed or not.

            In their article, the author has included several in-text citations mainly of books and journals. He has introduced other authors' ideas and works through parenthetical citations. It must be said that in all cases, the comma between the author and the year of publication of their work is missing. In addition, the "p" or "pp" to indicate page number has been omitted as well. One two authors are mentioned in an in-text citation, the ampersand must be used instead of the word “and” (Purdue OWL, 2013).

            The author has also used several direct quotations, which where all correctly included between double inverted commas with the period after the parenthetical citations and not before. No block quotations have been included.   

            In relation to signal phrases, the author has used only few, mostly resorting to parenthetical citations. The phrase “according to” has been overused, which seems to show poor academic style. Other phrases include “Vygotsky’s (…) theory describes”, “Bishop (…) describes” and “Hanauer (…) states”.    

            As a result of the previous analysis, it may be concluded that the author did not follow APA rules for in-text citations thoroughly.

           

           References

American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC.

Iida, A. (2010). Developing Voice by Composing Haiku: A Social-Expressivist Approach for Teaching Haiku Writing in EFL Contexts. English Teaching Forum, Nbr. 1. DOI: EJ914886
Purdue OWL (2013). In-Text Citations: Author/Authors. Retrieved October 2013, from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/02/

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Academic Summary

Academic Summary: Using Haiku to Develop Voice in EFL Settings

            In the article entitled "Developing Voice by Composing Haiku: A Social-Expressivist Approach for Teaching Haiku Writing in EFL Contexts" (Iida, 2010), the author argues that haiku, a type of Japanese poem, is a powerful tool that can be used within the social-expressivist approach to help L2 students develop voice and become aware of the interaction between readers and writers in EFL writing classrooms. 

           A requirement for L2 students at the terciary level is being able to make their voices heard. However, they do not do so in isolation but by interacting with others who become their audience. In this respect, adopting the social-expressivist approach in writing tasks within EFL settings aids students in making their voices heard and to develop a sense of audience because such approach applies communicative methods which generate "a process of negotiation to make meaning" (Iida, 2010, p. 29).

          Within this context, "composing and producing haiku is a communicative act that allows L2 writers to become sensitive to the writer-reader relationship" (Iida, 2010, p. 30). In fact, reader-centeredness is a key feature of haiku, which means that free interpretations by readers are encouraged. Therefore, its introduction in the writing classroom is found to be very helpful to develop students’ communication skills.

          The author recommends that reading haiku be practised before engaging students in composition so that they can analyse its structure and then work on their interpretations of the poem. Once they have discussed several haiku in class, they are prepared to compose haiku and this is done by following certain steps which include reviewing the concept of haiku, collecting material to write it, composing the haiku, asking a peer to read it and provide feedback, and finally publishing it.

          To conclude, composing and reading haiku in EFL writing classrooms is a powerful communicative tool within the social-expressivist approach, which allows students to express themselves and interact with others in a meaningful way, which results in successful language learning. 

          

References

Iida, A. (2010).  Developing Voice by Composing Haiku: A Social-Expressivist Approach for Teaching Haiku Writing in EFL Contexts. English Teaching Forum, Nbr. 1. DOI: EJ914886

Este obra está bajo una licencia de Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-SinObraDerivada 3.0 Unported.

Wikipedia and Academic Writing

An Interesting Tool to Develop Academic Writing Skills

            In her article, Tardy (2010) reviews the challenges facing students who are beginning to develop their academic writing skills and discusses the advantages of using wikis, particularly Wikipedia, to help them in such process. The author further describes the stages that students should follow to write an article aimed at being published in this popular wiki.  

            Students in higher education usually struggle when they have to work on writing tasks because they are not familiar with the rules and styles of academic discourse. Some of the activities involved in writing academically include doing research, paraphrasing and summarizing, citing sources correctly, developing a sense of audience, and complying with formal genre conventions.

            Wikipedia, a famous web-based space for writing collaboratively, might be a valuable tool that teachers could introduce in their classrooms to help students gain confidence in meeting the above mentioned challenges (Tardy, 2010). To further this objective, the author proposes giving the students an assignment consisting in writing an article which will be published in Wikipedia and will therefore be accessible to the public at large.

            In order to complete such task, the students should follow a number of steps: First, they should examine Wikipedia to understand how the site works and the general guidelines it establishes for contributing articles; then, they should gather information about the topic they would like to write about and make an outline of the information they want to include, paraphrasing phrases in order to avoid plagiarism; the fourth step is writing a draft and this is followed by revising, formatting sources and polishing, publishing being the final step.

            Tardy (2010) concludes that small research projects like this offer students the opportunity to start developing academic writing skills while promoting motivation, since, according to her experience, students seem to be excited about the fact thar their own work might be read by millions of people.

References

Tardy, C. (2010). Writing for the world: Wikipedia as an introduction to Academic         Writing. English Teaching Forum, 1, pp. 12-19, 27.

Este obra está bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 3.0 Unported.

APA Style in Academic Writing

Analyzing APA Style in an Academic Piece of Writing

            This paper reviews the style used in an article written by Dalvit et al. (2005) and provides a detailed account of the use of in-text citations and signal phrases, as well as the structure of the reference list, in terms of whether the rules prescribed by the American Psychological Association (APA, 2010) have been followed or not.

            In their article, the authors have included some in-text citations of books, dictionaries, online journals, publications by universities and software. Most of these are parenthetical citations and signal phrases have been scarcely used. In addition, the phrase “according to” has been repeated in the article instead of using a different phrase. This would seem to show poor academic style. Other signal phrases include research has shown that and preliminary investigation shows that.

            Even though the excessive use of direct or block quotations is not encouraged in academic writing, a few citations of these types might help support a point effectively. However, the authors in this article have not included any direct or block quotations at all. They have only resorted to paraphrasing to make reference to works or ideas of other authors. It must be said, on the other hand, that all in-text citations appear to have been correctly included and all of them were cited in the references.

            In relation to the reference list, there are several issues to mention considering the guidelines provided by Purdue OWL (2013a) on APA style. To begin with, this list should have been included on a separate sheet of paper and, instead of being left-aligned, the word "References" should have been centered on the page. Furthermore, it is followed by a colon, which is not appropriate either if APA style is to be followed. Instead, the word “References” should not be underlined, italicized or highlighted in any other way.

            Other important points to mention are that the entries in the list have been numbered and that they are not double-spaced. Additionally, in all cases, the names of the titles have been title-cased when they should have been sentence-cased. In relation to this, the Purdue OWL (2013b) guidelines state that “only the first word of a title will be capitalized” (In-Text Citation Capitalization section, para. 2). As well as this, in those entries citing journals, it is the name of the journal that should be italicized and not the title of the article (Purdue OWL, 2013a). Italics should be used for titles of books or journals.

            The sources are properly listed in alphabetical order but the authors should not have indented the first line of each entry. Instead, it is the second and following lines of an entry which should be indented five spaces, while the first line should be aligned to the left (University of Minnesota, n.d.).

            Some other deviations from APA style include the use of the word “and” instead of the ampersand in the sixth entry, the missing final dot in the entries corresponding to books, that is, entries 1, 3, 4, and 6, and the missing year indicating when the document was accessed, as well as the indication "retrieved from”, in entries where a website is cited. Finally, there is a mistake in the year of publication of the eighth entry, which reads “2004” while the year of the cited source in the body of the article is 2005.

            As a result of the previous analysis, it may be concluded that the authors followed APA style to some extent. While they have used in-text citations according to APA rules, other conventions have been disregarded, particularly those related to the reference list.

           

 References

American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC.

Dalvit, L., Murray, S., Terzoli, A., Zhao, X., Rhodes University, Mini, B., & University of Fort Hare. (2005). Providing increased access to English L2 students of computer science at a South African University. US-China Education Review, Sep. 2005, Vol. 2 (9).

Purdue OWL (2013a). Reference List: Basic Rules. Retrieved October 2013, from    https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/05/

Purdue OWL (2013b). In-Text Citations: The Basics. Retrieved October 2013, from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/02/

University of Minnesota Center for Writing. (n.d.). Quicktips: APA documentation style: Reference list. University of Minnesota: Student Writing Support. Retrieved October 2013, from http://writing.umn.edu/sws/assets/pdf/quicktips/apa_References.pdf

Este obra está bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 3.0 Unported.

What Is a Discourse Community?

Discussing the Concept of Discourse Community

            Several definitions have been proposed for the term "discourse community”. This paper discusses the six criteria suggested by Swales (1990) in order to determine the scope of the concept.

            Swales (1990) argues that in order for a group of people to be considered a discourse community, they must share common goals. An example of this could be a group of teachers who want to improve their teaching practices and grow professional. As Chadding (1995) states, people join together to achieve objectives, solve problems or create products (as cited in Wenzlaff & Wieseman, 2004).

            Another key characteristic of a discourse community is information exchange.  It is essential that members interact with each other in order for them to learn (Wenzlaff & Wieseman, 2004). It seems that group work is a fundamental factor required for professional development. As McLaughlin and Tabert (1993) put it a “discourse community cannot exist in the absence of a collaborative culture and an environment that supports risk-taking and reflection” (as cited in Wenzlaff & Wieseman, 2004, Summary and Implications, para. 2).

            Discourse community members use one or more genres which are specific to their community (Swales, 1990). In fact, they agree to abide by certain language styles and structures, which become a social convention (Bizzell, 1992; as cited in Kelly-Kleese, 2004). This results in members acquiring community competence, that is to say, the knowledge of the language you need to communicate appropriately in a given discourse community (Kutz, 1997; as cited in Kelly-Kleese).

            In addition, Swales (1990) asserts that discourse community members interact by means of certain participatory mechanisms in communicating and providing feedback to each other. For instance, when describing the community college discourse, Kelly-Kleese (2004, Teaching as Scholarship, para. 7) states it flows in different ways, which may include “oral dialogue or text in arenas such as e-mail, electronic mailing lists, and discussion forums on the Web”.      

            A discourse community makes use of highly specialized terminology (Swales, 1990).  This includes words that outsiders would not usually understand since according to Giroux (1983) “language is a social event that is defined, shaped and constrained by the culture of the setting in which it is used” (as cited in Kelly-Kleese, 2001, Abstracts, para. 4). Therefore, concepts acquire specific meanings given by a specific group at a certain time (Hoffman-Kipp, Artiles & Lopez Torres, 2003).

            Discourse communities are characterized by having a high general level of expertise. Clark (1994, as cited in Kelly-Kleese, 2004) states that although it is assumed that all members in a discourse have equal opportunities to have their voices heard and to shape reality through language, some members exert more influence than others so that “individuals and groups with greater skill in using the language system will exercise power in naming and thus controlling how others will view social reality” (Bowers, 1987, p.28, as cited in Kelly-Kleese, 2001).

            To sum up, a discourse community implies common purposes and relationships, and similar attitudes and values, as well as sharing knowledge following certain conventions, and a discourse structure and style related to how to communicate such knowledge and achieve the proposed goals (Kutz, 1997, as cited in Kelly-Kleese, 2001).

References

Hoffman-Kipp, P., Artiles, A. J., & Lopez Torres, L. (2003). Beyond reflection: teacher learning as praxis. Theory into Practice. Retrieved October 2007, from

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NQM/is_3_42/ai_108442653

Kelly-Kleese, C. (2001). Editor’s choice: An open memo to Community College Faculty and Administrators. Community College Review. Retrieved October 2007, from

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HCZ/is_1_29/ai_77481463

Kelly-Kleese, C. (2004). UCLA community college review: community college scholarship and discourse. Community College Review. Retrieved October 2007, from

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HCZ/is_1_32/ai_n6361541

Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Wenzlaff, T. L., & Wieseman, K. C. (2004). Teachers need teachers to grow. Teacher Education Quarterly. Retrieved October 2007, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3960/is_200404/ai_n9349405

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Welcome!

In this blog you will find the academic writings I produce as part of two classes at a University course (licenciatura) I am doing. I am an English translator and teacher and I enjoy studying and learning. This will be a great opportunity to share my work and get feedback from colleagues and the academic community at large. Please feel free to make comments on the different topics.

                                                              Erika