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/

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

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.

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