1201 enc1102 writing and rhetoric ii sections u12 amp rxb spring 2020discussionsannoying ways we use sources revision log
ANNOYING WAYS WE USE SOURCES: REVISION LOG
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Very often, your instructors may have focused on teaching you how to NOT plagiarize, but I’d argue that a paper could be free of plagiarism (Links to an external site.) and still be a terrible writing product that does not Mind the GAP and/or does not add anything new to an ongoing conversation.
In theory, you could go online, copy and paste from different websites and cite each single one of those quotations using let’s say MLA citation style (Links to an external site.), but that would be a Frankenstein of a writing product, a bunch of other people’s ideas glued together with no soul of its own, without the writer’s voice.
This week, our focus will be on how to use sources to further your own writing purposes while also meeting the ethical standards of the FIU community specifically, and academic communities in the United States in general. By the way, the definition of plagiarism and the practices we use to avoid it, change from country to country, culture to culture, discourse community to discourse community.
To help you practice using sources in ways that avoid plagiarism and further your own goals as a writer as you build your ethnographic report, I’m asking you to do the following:
DUE TUE. 3/24: PART 1 OF 2 = 60 POINTS:
- Take about 30 minutes to read “Annoying Ways People Use Sources” (Links to an external site.) by Kyle Stedman.
- Compose and post here a revision log of your own where you do the following:
- Define in your own words, each of the annoyances Stedman outlines in his essay.
- For each annoyance, find an example from your own ethnographic report or one of your classmates’ working drafts to illustrate the “annoying” way you or a classmate used the source and how you might fix it.
Here’s an example of how the log might look for one of the annoyances.
| Annoyance | “Annoying” Use of Source | The Fix |
|
I Swear I Did Some Research! It’s annoying when the writer drops a citation without making it clear what information came from that source. I think I’d rather call this annoyance “Who said what?“ |
It’s possible that a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the universe will open new doors of understanding. If theories from sociology, communication, and philosophy joined with physics, the possibilities would be boundless. This would inspire new research, much like in the 1970s when scientists changed their focus from grand-scale theories of the universe to the small concerns of quantum physics (Hawking 51). It’s not clear which parts of the paragraph come from Hawking and which parts come from me, the writer. |
Here, I write the sentences preceding the citation with specific words and phrases that will tell readers what information came from where. Like this: It’s possible that a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the universe will open new doors of understanding. I believe that if theories from sociology, communication, and philosophy joined with physics, the possibilities would be boundless. This would inspire new research, much like the changes Stephen Hawking describes happening in the 1970s when scientists changed their focus from grand-scale theories of the universe to the small concerns of quantum physics (51). |
Your revision log should include ALL 6 ANNOYANCES though.
Also, this (above) is just one example of one possible layout/design for the revision log. How you organize the parts is up to you.
Have fun!
DUE THRS. 3/26: PART 2 OF 2 = 10 POINTS PER REPLY FOR TOTAL OF 40 POINTS:
REVIEW and REPLY TO 4 CLASSMATES to help them revise their use of sources. How might the source be better integrated into the writing? Do you agree with the way your classmate “fixed” the annoyance, or can you think of another possible way to revise?
