Acknowledging Sources - screen 5
What strategies can students use in preparation for the acknowledgment of sources in their work?
Students can:
- organise notes and record details of where information was actually found
- record details of the resource being used on the pages of your notes, printouts or photocopies of information
- learn about correct citation and referencing methods before you begin your research
- access the information required for referencing different types of resources (e.g. books, newspaper articles, films, websites)
- ask teachers for guidelines about the style, format and amount of detail required to acknowledge the resources used in an assignment
- set up a chart to keep track of the basic bibliographic information (i.e. author, title, date, pages used, publisher, etc) of any resource you use
- know the difference between a quotation, summary and paraphrase (see Module three)
The downloadable 'Citation Worksheet' available at: http://www.oslis.k12.or.us/docs/citewrksht.pdf may be a useful referencing template, regardless of the referencing style being used.
Consider these situations
Q: You had this fantastic internet source that you used a lot for your research project but you didn't record all the details. You really need to list this source in your reference list.
How can you possibly relocate the source?
A: Use an internet search engine like Google. Ask your teacher-librarian for help. Next time, try to get in the habit of recording details of any sources used at the time of accessing the information.
Q: You have spent months finding information on your chosen topic for your major work and now you are expected to use quotation marks to indicate if you are quoting directly from another source. This is expecting too much.
A: The marker will probably know and you may be penalised. This situation highlights the importance of being organised with your preparation for any assignment/research task because you could be falsely attributing the quotations. If you are recording the actual words/creation of another person in your notes, you should indicate this in your notes and record all the relevant information for that source.
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