This document provides an outline for a presentation on appropriate use of sources in academic writing. It discusses key concepts like writer's voice, attribution, plagiarism, paraphrasing, citation patterns, and reporting verbs. The presentation notes that conventions for using sources vary between disciplines, with humanities fields tending to use more direct quotations and integral citations that prominently feature the author. Sciences typically employ non-integral citations to maintain an impression of objectivity. Overall, the document stresses the importance of properly attributing borrowed information and acknowledging conventions within one's own field and genre.

1. APPROPRIATE USE OF SOURCES
IN ACADEMIC WRITING
Vassiliki Rizomilioti
Wednesday 7/12/11
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2. OUTLINE
• Purpose of presentation.
• Writer’s voice and other voices in a text
• Averral and Attribution
• Whose voice?
• Plagiarism, reasons, types, example.
• Ways of using reported information
• Citation patterns
• Citing in Science and Humanities
• Reporting verbs: Types-Frequencies
• Conclusion
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3. Purpose of this presentation
 Awareness raising regarding issues of source reference
 Sensitation to variability in the way of using reference to
sources depending on discipline.
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4. . Writer‟s voice and other voices in a text
 Task :Try to answer the questions:
 A. Is an academic written text a monologue or a
dialogue?
 B. Whose voices are involved in an academic text?
 C. If you do not attribute claim who do imply is the
source?
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5. Averral-Attribution
 Attribution (Tadros 1993: 98, citing Sinclair 1985) is
the marked case where the sources of authority are
clearly signalled.
 Text averall is evidenced in the unmarked parts of the
text, where the utterances are assumed to be
attributed to the author.
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6. Whose voice? The writer’s or the reported
writer’s?
Task: try to identify whose voice is involved.
o These discursive speech acts usually occur at the end of the
summary or book review…
o A more profound note to the discussion of critical approaches
to TESOL is added by Pennycook (1999), who ….
o The main focus in this paper is on writing critical summaries
on multiple sources, which, I argue, could be a useful step
towards academic writing proper.
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7. Whose voice? (continued)
1. …but many linguists regard such techniques as unreliable.
2. …the ceramic evidence demonstrates the existence of a
western coastal supply route to …
3. His confession reveals his vulnerability.
4. Although traditional Western biases lead one to assume that
these legs were once attached to upper bodies, no appropriate
torsos have been unearthed.
5. it could be argued that because P. rhoeas is generally
regarded as having a Mediterranean origin (McNaughton &
Harper, 1964),
6. Isabel Armstrong‟s commentary on the passage seems fair in
claiming that ….
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8. Why we need to refer to other writers.
Task: which of the following statements do you agree with?
We report other people‟s claims
• For ethical reasons and to avoid plagiarism
• To provide support for our arguments
• To present views we disagree with
• To create a context for our own contribution in the field by
giving an overview of different views.
• To show that our work is part of a tradition
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9. Plagiarism
Task : Discuss:
 What is plagiarism?
 Is it a crime?
 Is it intentional?
 Types of plagiarism
Plagiarism is a violation of academic standards.
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10. Why do we plagiarise?
Task:
 Think of reasons why one might plagiarize?
 How can we avoid plagiarism?
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11. Types of plagiarism
 1. You fail to report the source
 2. You follow closely the original text (you make minor
changes)
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12. Example of plagiarism
Task: try to identify why this extract from a student’s writing
is an example of plagiarism.
 Metaphor is for most people a feature a feature of extraordinary rather than
ordinary language. According to Lakoff and Johnson (1980:3) metaphor is
typically viewed as a characteristic of language alone, a matter than words
rather than thought or action. (reported information)
 Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the
rhetorical flourish – matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language.
Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone,
a matter of words ratehr than thought or action. (original information)
(Pecorari 2008: 75).
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13. How can we avoid plagiarism?
• By being aware that we need to mark our ideas and those of
others clearly.
• By marking borrowed work appropriately.
 We need to use our own words, keeping the meaning of the
original.
 interpret and evaluate (not just describe) reported claims.
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14. Ways of using reported information
1. Paraphrase: “restatement of an idea in different words, but
the same length”.
2. Generalisation: “a statement of similarity from the work of
two or more source articles”.
3. Summary: “an abreviated statement of a result or fact from a
single source article”.
4. Direct Quotation:”a stretch of three or more words which
are found in both citing and source articles”.
Dubois (1988)
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15. Example of an acceptable paraphrase
Task: why do you think the following is an acceptable
paraphrase? Why?
 Language is the main means of communication between peoples. But so
many different languages have developed that language has often been a
barrier rather than an aid to understanding among peoples. For many years,
people have dreamed of setting up an international universal language
which all people could speak and understand. (original)
 Humans communicate through language. Because there are so many
different languages, however, people around the word have a difficult time
understanding one another. Some people have wished for a universal
language that speakers all over the world could understand (Kispert 2004).
(from Oshima and Hogue 2006: 128).
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16. . Task: can you identify different types of
reporting in the following:
 Yet, it was reported that the diameter of the Web is 19. [5].
 According to Vygotsky, one of the developmental outcomes of learning
leading development in the ZPD is that the child becomes able (as does the
adult) to engage in developmental activity volitionally
 The discourse of lectures has been examined in naturalistic conditions
(Chaudron 1983, Kelly 1977, McKenna 1987)
 Over the years, many protocols have been designed for maintaining
synchronization of physical clocks over computer networks [6,14, 21, 27].
 Additionally, relatively high levels of retinoic acid have been reported to be
present in mature cow and mouse retinas (McCaffery and Drager 1993).
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17. Quotations
 word level quotes e.g. The two strategies are “splitting” and
“lumping” (Moon 1987)
 phrase level quotes e.g. Many reports from the late 1980s and
early 1990s showed that the science education in the United
States has been “less than adequate” (Buxton, 1998, p. 343),
 sentence level quotes e.g. Edge concluded that "the real test of
good notes is their usefulness.“
 Whole paragraphs which should be indented and in smaller
fonts.
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18.  Task: when you discuss others‟ or own previous work in your
writing which of the following do you we use more often?
Paraphrase, Generalisation, Summary, Direct quotation.
 Is direct quotation common in your discipline?
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19. Citation types (Swales 1990)
 Integral: a.With a reporting verb e.g. X reported that …/ The
quality of…was established by X (2000)/ X‟s theory (2000)
claims that…
b. Without a reporting verb e.g. X‟s theory (2000) of…has
general support/ According to X (2000)
 Non-integral: a. With a reporting verb e.g. Previous research
has shown that …(X 2000)/ It has been shown that…(X
2000)/It has been reported that …[1-3]
b.Without a reporting verb e.g. It is probably the case that …(X
2000)/ The …may be made of…[1-3]The ….may be made
of….(but cf. X2 2003).
 Task: discuss which of those citation types are common in
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your discipline.

20. Types of reporting verbs
1. verbal e.g. state, term, challenge, write
2. Mental e.g. believe, think, focus on
3. Research e.g. measure, calculate, obtain.
Thompson and Ye (1994: 130):
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21.  Task: reflect: „West argues that…‟, what other verbs do you
think you can use to report information in academic writing?
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22. Reporting and evaluation
Less endorsing Rather neutral More endorsing
Claim Say/tell/write Affirm
Contend Comment Confirm
Suggest State Agree
Argue Declare Concur
In x’s opinion Cite Maintain
Believe Note Show
Think Explain Demonstrate
Presume In view of Establish
Speculate According to Point out
Propose
Adapted from Coffin et al
(2003)
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23. Reporting in science and humanities
(BIOLOGY)
 Recent field and laboratory studies have shown that recruitment of the
shallow-water agaricid corals, Agaricia humilis and A. tenuifolia, is
determined in part by larval recognition of a chemical inducer of
substratum-specific settlement and metamorphosis (Morse et al., 1988).
 The Price et al. model asserts that punitive behavior is a response to
payoff differentials, rather than to a breech of reciprocity norms.
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24. 24. Engineering
 Recent advances in miniaturization and low-cost, low-power design have
led to active research in large-scale, highly distributed systems of small,
wireless, low-power, unattended sensors and actuators [2]. While
individual sensor nodes have only limited functionality, the global behavior
of a sensor network can be quite complex. …… There are many examples
of sensor network tasks that require synchronized time: for example, to
save energy by forming a sleep and wakeup schedule [3]; create a
distributed acoustic beam forming platform [15] and integrate a time-series
of proximity detections into a velocity estimate [4].
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25. Literary Criticism
• …he felt that the deportation of Jews (beginning in August
1942) was a crime
• He sees the peasant seductress of avin‟s story as “a type of his
race and his own
• Stansky and Abrahams have argued that Orwell was taken on
at half fees ….
• In contrast postmodernism has been identified as proclaiming
the end of the author
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26. Rank of citations by discipline (Hyland 1999: 346)
Discipline Total citations
Sociology 1.040
Marketing 949
Philosophy 852
Biology 827
Applied Linguistics 753
Electronic Engineering 428
Mechanical Engineering 275
Physics 248
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27. Most frequent reporting verbs: Hyland (1999:349)
 Biology: describe, find, report, show, suggest, observe
 Physics: develop, report, study, find, expand
 Electrical engineering: propose, describe, show, publish,
develop
 Mechanical engineering: describe, show, report, discuss,
develop
 Marketing: suggest, argue, find, demonstrate, propose, show
 Applied Linguistics: suggest, argue, show, explain, find, point
out
 Sociology:argue, suggest, describe, note, analyse, discuss
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28. Range of Reporting verbs in Archaeology articles
 Appear, argue, assert, assume, believe, claim, comment,
conclude, conjecture, consider, demonstrate, discover,
emphasise, estimate, feel, find, imagine, illustrate, imply,
indicate, infer, calculate, deduce, determine, hope,
hypothesise, know, mention, note, observe, point out,
postulate, propose, prove, report, reveal, seem, show,
speculate, state, stress, suggest, thought, recognise, and rule
out.
Rizomilioti 2003
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29. Range of Reporting verbs in Literary Criticism
articles
 Announce, acknowledge, admit, agree, appear, argue, assert,
assume, believe, claim, comment, concede, conclude, confess,
conjecture, contend, convince, declare, decide, demonstrate,
discover, doubt, emphasise, feel, find, hope, hold, hypothesise,
imagine, imply, indicate, inform, insist, judge, know, learn,
maintain, note, notice, presume, promise, prove, realise,
remark, report, reveal, say, seem, speculate, state, suggest,
suppose, suspect, think, tell, understand, warn, and write.
Rizomilioti (2003)
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30. Range of reporting verbs in Biology
 Accept, anticipate, appear, argue, assume, believe, conclude,
confirm, consider, demonstrate, doubt, emphasise, establish,
estimate, find, hypothesise, imply, indicate infer, note,
observe, postulate, predict, propose, reason, recognise, record,
report, reveal, say, seem, show, speculate, suggest, suppose,
suspect, and verify.
Rizomilioti (2003)
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31. Humanities: similarities-differences
 The disciplines belonging with the humanities e.g. Philosophy
and Literary Criticism, have the majority of integral citations.
They also have more quotations.
 In science and engineering there is a tendency for non-integral
and non-subject citation forms.
Rizomilioti (2003)
Hyland (1999)
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32. Accounting for differences across disciplines
Knowledge is constructed in different ways in different
disciplinary areas.
In the physical sciences author prominence is reduced and thus
an impression of objectivity is obtained.
In the humanities personal views are valued and thus the writer
tends to be given a prominent position in the sentence
(INTEGRAL CITATIONS).
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33. CONCLUSION
It is important to
1. Be able to make clear what is one’s own claim or view,
what belongs to others and evaluate properly reported
information.
2. Acknowledge properly borrowed information exploring what
conventions exist in our discipline and genre (e.g. research
article).
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34. REFERENCES
Coffin C., Curry M. J., Goodman S., Hewings A, Lillis T. and Swann J. (2003).
Teaching academic writing: A toolkit for higher education. London: Routledge.
Dubois B.L. (1988). Citation in Biomedical Journal Articles. English for Specific
purposes, 7, 181-193.
Hyland K. (1999). Academic Attribution: Citation and the construction of disciplinary
knowledge. Applied Linguistics 20, 3, 341-367.
Oshima A and Hogue A. (2006). Writing Academic English. New York: Pearson,
Longman.
Pecorari D. (2008). Academic Writing and Plagiarism. London: Continuum.
Rizomilioti (2003). Epistemic Modality in Academic Writing: A Corpus-linguistic
approach. Unpublished PhD thesis. University of Birmingham.
Swales J. M. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tadros A. (1993). „The Pragmatics of Text Averral and Attribution in academic texts‟.
In Hoey M. (ed.) Data, Description, Discourse: Papers on the English language in
honour of John McH Sinclair. London: Harper Collins.
Thompson G. and Y. Ye (1991) „Evaluation in the Reporting Verbs used in Academic
papers‟. Applied Linguistics, 12:365-382.
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35. HOME STUDY
Read the Introduction and Discussion sections of two research articles
from major journals in your field written by native speakers of
English:
a) If possible try to identify some reporting claims and the way they were
presented in the original source (article or book). How do the writers alter
the attributed claims?
b) Do the writers tend to generalise, summarise, quote, or paraphrase?
c) What type of citation do the writers use more often ? Integral or non-
integral? If integral, what reporting verbs are used? are they of the neutral,
less or more endorsing type?
.
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