ENGLISH 214 SOURCE EVALUATION # NAME .docx

ENGLISH 214 SOURCE EVALUATION #
NAME:
CLASSID: _______________________
REPORT TITLE
1. THE SOURCE
How long is your source?
How did you find the source?:
Write a complete APA reference for your source:
2. SUMMARY OF THE SOURCE
In about100 words, summarize the main points of your source.

3. EVALUATION:
In about 100 words, explain why you chose this source for your
report.
Relevance: connect relevant parts of the source with your
outline.
Article: what level is it? How up-to-date is the information?
Publication / website / author: are they reputable, unbiased and
knowledgeable?
Unit 1b
Finding and documenting sources
FINDING SOURCES
............................................................... 2
Primary research ............................................................... 2
Secondary research ...............................................................

4
The Library ............................................................... 5
Print sources ................................................... 5
Electronic sources ....................................... 9
The Internet ............................................................... 14
DOCUMENTING SOURCES ...................................................
18
References ..........................................................................
18
Print sources .............................................................. 18
Electronic sources .................................................. 20
URLs and DOIs ...................................... 21
Son of Citation Machine ...................................... 23
In-text citations .............................................................. 24
One or two authors .................................................. 24
Multiple authors .................................................. 27
Personal communication ...................................... 27

Academic & Professional Communication T132 2
The 214 Major Report:
1b Finding & documenting sources
Finding sources
You must use at least six sources to write your major report.
Before you begin, you have
to know what restrictions, if any, your teacher places on the
sources you can use. For
example, he may expect sources to be fairly new (published
within, say, the last 2 or 3
years); he may expect sources to adhere to a minimum and
maximum length (eg between
one and ten pages); he may require every source to have full
bibliographical information
such as an author, a title and a date of publication; he may
expect you to use only
reputable websites and read online sources whose authors have
a relevant background in

the field; he may expect you to use a variety of source types—
both print and non-print—
such as books, journals, and specialist magazines. When you
know what the rules are,
you can start your research.
There are two basic ways to acquire your sources: primary
research and secondary
research.
Primary research
Primary research involves work done ‘in the field’ to discover
your own original

information. Most primary research methods can be very time-
consuming, requiring a lot
of preparatory work and a comparable amount of time spent
compiling and analyzing the
results. If you feel your report will benefit from primary
research, you should inform your
teacher as soon as possible so he can help you with the
necessary preparation.
The following summarizes some points to consider before
starting primary research.
PRIMARY RESEARCH
Interviews
Correspondence
Surveys
Site visits
SECONDARY RESEARCH

Library
Summon search engine
Databases
Print collection
Internet
Interviews
Interviews can be conducted face to face or over the
telephone. Valuable information can be obtained by
interviewing an expert in the field of your topic, who
could be an instructor or adviser in your major or a
professional in the workplace. The first step is to decide
what specific information your report lacks,
information that cannot be obtained through secondary
research in the Library or on the Internet.

You must then carefully compose the questions that you want to
ask the expert. A series
of simple Yes/No questions may not yield the information you
need so devise some open-
ended questions that will allow the interviewee to speak at some
length in his own way.
Consider also how much time you can reasonably ask of
someone who is essentially
doing you a favour.
You must also think about how best to record the information
you receive: Can you rely
solely on your memory? Are you quick enough to take notes?
Will the interviewee allow
you to record the interview? When these questions have been
settled, you are ready to
politely request an interview at a mutually convenient time and
place.
The ultimate goal of the interview is a transcript, that is, a
verbatim, written record of the
questions asked and the answers given. This will then become
one of your report sources

and can be used in the usual way to paraphrase, summarize and
quote ideas. Note,
however, that in the APA reference style, you should not write a
reference for an
interview though you will still have to include an in-text
citation for it. (See in-text
citations for personal communications on pages 27 and 28
below.)
Correspondence
Sometimes a face-to-face or telephone interview is not
possible—for example, it may be difficult to agree on a
mutually convenient time for the interview or the
interviewee may live far away. In this case, the interview
can be conducted by letter or email. The same rules apply
regarding the type of questions to ask and the demands you
can reasonably place on someone’s willingness to help.
Also, in both interviews and correspondence, make a
special effort to be polite: adopt a courteous tone when
making the request and, after you have the information,

send a follow-up letter, email or phone call to thank the
person who supplied you with the information.
An example of such “special request” correspondence can be
found in Successful Writing
at Work by Philip Kolin on pages 112 and 113. For special
email considerations, see also
pages 78 to 84. Note that the APA style does not require you to
write a reference for a
personal communication such as a letter though you will still
need to cite it in the text.
Surveys
A survey involves posing your questions to many
people. There are two ways to conduct a survey: you
can ask oral questions of a variety of respondents and
record their answers as they are given, or you can

prepare a questionnaire for distribution, which is
completed and returned to you at the respondents’
convenience.
You first compose a set of questions designed to elicit the
information you need to fill the
gaps in your knowledge. The questions can be varied—multiple-
choice, yes/no, ranking,
or open-ended—and should not demand too much of the
respondent’s time. As you write
the questions, remember that you will eventually be required to
collate the results they
yield in a meaningful way, such as in a summary or in a table or
chart, so phrase the
questions in such a way that they will yield easily collatable
information.
Other decisions you must make include which individuals to
ask, how many to ask, and
how to distribute and collect the questionnaires. As with the
interview transcript and
email response, the collated information will provide you with a
source for your report.

Site visit
Original information can also be obtained by a visit to
a site to record your observations. For example, a CE
student writing a report on campus traffic safety could
station himself at a busy intersection to observe the
behaviour of drivers and to measure the rate of traffic
at certain times during the day and week. A MKT
student researching how shops display their products
could spend some time at a supermarket observing
how successful various displays are in attracting customers. A
CHE student writing about
desalination could visit the desalination plant at Al-Aziziyah to
watch the process in
action at first hand and perhaps combine his visit with an
interview with a technician.
Prior permission is of course required before visiting any site.
All methods of primary research need careful planning before
the research is undertaken,
and, once it is completed, they all require a thorough, accurate

analysis of the results
obtained. Primary research can supply you with information that
cannot be found
anywhere else; however, you should consider it only if it will
improve your report and if
you have the time and determination to do it well.
Secondary research
You will obtain most—possibly all—of your sources from
secondary research. Unlike
primary research, where the writer interacts with his
respondents to obtain original
information, secondary research involves locating sources that
already exist, such as
books, journals, magazines, government documents, theses and
dissertations, business
reports, and reference works like encyclopedias, manuals,

almanacs and dictionaries.
There are two basic methods of secondary research: the Library
and the Internet.
The Library
The Library will provide you with access to hundreds of
thousands of print and
electronic sources.
Print sources
Although you are likely to find electronic sources to be more
useful for your report than
print sources, the KFUPM Library does contain many thousands
of hard copies of books
and magazines to help you with your research. In some ways,
being able to flick easily
through the pages of a ‘real’ book or magazine is often more
convenient than having to
negotiate through the online pages of an e-book. The
disadvantage, of course, is that a
real book or magazine will not give you an electronic version to
work with and from

which to copy & paste text and illustrations into your report.
Instead, you will have to
make photocopies.
On the plateau level, you will find some current periodicals and
journals which are likely
to be too new to have been included in the Library’s electronic
databases. These include
Time, Newsweek, Windows, Science, Popular Mechanics and
Electronics World. There
are also some daily newspapers suitable for business and
finance topics, such as the
International Herald Tribune and the Financial Times. On this
level you will also find
the Library’s reference collection containing printed
encyclopedias such as World Book
and Britannica as well as atlases, manuals, almanacs and
dictionaries. In addition, there
are many hundreds of back copies of periodicals on the third
floor and hundreds of books
in all majors on the fourth floor. Many of these publications are
now very dated but can
still provide you with some useful background information for
your report.

Call numbers
The KFUPM Library is an open-stack library which uses
the Library of Congress (LC) classification system. With
this system, a call number consisting of at least three
lines is assigned to every book and to the titles of all
periodicals. There are 21 major subject divisions,
indicated by one, two or (unusually) three letters. You
should by now be familiar with the letters that refer to
your major. See the table below which gives the basic one-
letter classification and the two-letter classification for
selected headings:
A - General Works N - Fine Arts QE - Geology

B - Philosophy-Religion-Psychology P - Linguistics QH -
Biology
C - History (Civilization) PC - Romance Languages QK -
Botany
D - History (Except America) PD - Germanic Languages QL -
Zoology
E - American History PE - English Language QM - Human
Anatomy
F - Local American, Latin
American History
PQ - Romance Literature QP - Physiology
G - Geography-Anthropology PR - English Literature QR -
Microbiology
H - Social Sciences PS - American Literature R - Medicine
J - Political Science Q - Science S - Agriculture
K - Law QA - Mathematics T - Technology
L - Education QB - Astronomy U - Military Science
M - Music Scores QC - Physics V - Naval Science
ML - Music (Literature of Music) QD - Chemistry Z -
Bibliography, Lib Science
Call numbers are found on the spine of books and consist of
three or more lines:

Line 1: D is History; DS is Asian History.
Line 2 gives finer detail about the subject: Vietnam War
Line 3 indicates the author: Daniel C. Hallin
Here, the last line shows the year of publication, 1986.
This call number (DS 559.45 .H35 1986) refers to a book titled
Uncensored War: The
Media and Vietnam by Daniel C. Hallin. In our Library, most
books are shelved in the
stacks on the fourth floor. However, books with a DS call
number are kept on the plateau
level. If our Library stocks this particular book, you will find it
there.
One last piece of information you need to know about call
numbers is how they
determine the order in which books are placed on the shelves.
subject headings so
A precedes B and BC precedes BD.

determined by the
numerical order of the second line. So QA 873 precedes QA
2124.
determined by the third
line: the letter and the decimal number that follows it. So QA
2124 .F534
precedes QA 2124 .F54 (because the decimal number 0.534 is
smaller than the
decimal number 0.54).
etermined by
the fourth line if it
consists of another letter and a number. The letter determines
the order first of all
and, after that, the number. This number is treated as a decimal
number even if
there is no decimal point so M456 precedes M46.
The diagrams below illustrate the shelf arrangement according
to call number:

D DC DL F FA
QA
50
QA
55
QA
76
QA
76.15
QA
76.73
PN
6231

.E259
PN
6231
.E29
PN
6231
.E4
PN
6231
.E74
PN
6231
.F44
QE
862
.D5
L22

QE
862
.D5
L35
QE
862
.D5
L4571
QE
862
.D5
L461
QE
862
.D5
M3311
QE
862

.D5
M37
You can find the call number of a book—as well as access the
Library’s collection of e-
resources—by using the Library’s Summon search engine.
Using Summon to find a book’s call number
You can find a book’s call number using Summon in the
following way. Supposing your
report task is to evaluate the discoveries of the Hubble Space
Telescope, go to the Library
home page, enter your key term into the Summon box, and click
Search.
On the following (results) screen, select “Book/eBook” from the
Content Type sidebar
on the left of the screen:

1. Leave the category as “All” or select “Books.” 2. Enter your
search term. 3. Click on Search.
Select Book/eBook.
The page below shows the first few results obtained after
entering the search term
“hubble space telescope” and selecting “Book/eBook” from the
Content Type sidebar.
You will notice that each of the book entries on the results page
has a call number.
You now need to know if the Library has a copy of your chosen
book so click on “Check
Availability.” The following screen will appear:
The screen shows that one copy of this book is available in the
Main Library. Write down

the book’s call number and go to the stacks on the fourth level.
Find the book, scan its
contents quickly and, if the book looks as if it could be useful,
check it out at the
circulation desk on the plateau level.
The book’s call number.
Choose a book and click on Check Availability.
Electronic sources
Using Summon to find electronic sources
The advent of electronic media which can provide the full text
of a book or an article is
making call numbers and print media in general redundant.
While Summon is useful in
finding the call numbers of books, its main purpose is to enable
the researcher to access
the Library’s electronic resources.

Step 1: Enter your search term in the Summon box with the
default search category “All”:
Step 2: On the results page, select the categories you want using
the sidebar on the left of
the screen.
Choose full text items so you will get an e-
version of the source. Do not exclude news-
paper articles.
Your choice in the Content Type box will be
determined by your teacher’s requirements.
It is recommended that you use journal
articles (which include magazines),
newspapers and books to write your report. So
choose these categories or simply keep “Any.”
The sidebar includes six other boxes (author,
subject, date, language, genre and region). You

are advised to leave these in the default mode
of “Any.”
Step 3: Scan the results screen. The one below shows the first
few results for the search
term ‘e-commerce security problems’:
Check every entry carefully trying to judge how useful and
accessible the article might
be: Is the periodical a magazine, newspaper or journal? How old
is the article? Does the
brief article description or abstract (if there is one) indicate its
usefulness?
Step 4: Select two or three possible articles and then click on
the title of each. The page

that appears will show the full text of the article, or there may
be a choice between the
full text and a PDF version. If you have a choice, it is usually
better to select the PDF
version, especially if the article has illustrations that are not
shown in the full-text format.
The PDF version will provide the exact copy of the article as it
appeared in the periodical
and so will show any illustrations.
The search term
In this box, you can choose to organize
the articles by relevance or by date
(newest or oldest first). Number of results
Genre (journal, news-
paper, book, etc.)
Click here to save the
article in a folder. From
here, you can choose the
citation style (APA).
Click on a title to bring up
the full text of the article.

Click here to
see the abstract.
Title and Author
Bibliographic
details
Part of the abstract
This shows the number of
times the article has been
cited in other articles.
Clicking on the title of the second article will bring up the
screen below. It gives the full
text of the article but also indicates that a PDF version is
available.
The full text article

This indicates that a PDF version is also
available.
The article appears as text
only. If it is useful, print it out.
The PDF version
If you click on the PDF icon, the following screen will appear:
Step 5: The results page also enables you to make an APA
reference for the articles you
choose, in the following way:
This shows the article as it actually

appeared in the magazine Card
Technology Today. If it is useful,
print it out.
On the results page, click this icon next to
the article you have chosen. It will save the
article in a temporary folder at the foot of
the screen.
Open the folder. You will be offered a choice of styles. Select
APA:
Copy and paste the reference into a Word file. Check that it is
complete, accurate and
well-formatted. Make any necessary changes.
Other Library resources
It is possible that the Summon search engine will

furnish you with all the sources you need to write
your report. However, you should also be familiar
with, and try out, some of the other ways of
finding sources that the Library offers. For
example, the Library subscribes to over 40
electronic databases, many of which can provide
you with full text articles.
Four of the most useful databases for you are likely to be
ABI/Inform Global (mainly for
business, finance, economics, and marketing); Academic Search
Premier (a
multidisciplinary database offering access to 5000 journals in
science, engineering and
the humanities); Applied Science & Technology Plus (offering
full text articles in, as its
name indicates, applied science and technology); and the
KFUPM theses & dissertations
database (giving access to academic work written by the
University’s graduate students).
In addition to these databases, the Library also has electronic
subscriptions to over 700

individual journals in a variety of disciplines and to 8 e-book
databases, two of the
most important being the general databases, Credo Reference
and ebrary.
The KFUPM Library is one of the most advanced libraries in the
Middle East offering its
users everything they need to carry out high-level research. Use
your semester in English
214 to acquire effective library research skills that will benefit
you both in your studies
and later in your professional work.
The Internet
The Internet is a vast collection of resources offering access to
millions of websites.
However, it also requires a very careful approach since anybody
can post anything on the

Internet and few websites can guarantee the accuracy and
objectivity of their content.
While it is perfectly possible to confine your research to the
Library’s print and electronic
resources, it is also advisable to devote some research time to
discovering what the
Internet has to offer. As the Internet is constantly changing and
expanding, the following
description offers a snapshot of what is currently available to
the researcher.
Search engines
The first place to start is with a search engine. The most popular
one, with about 80% of
all web searches, is Google. Other well known search engines
are Bing, Yahoo!, and Ask.
Some search engines—referred to as metasearch engines—send
search requests to
multiple search engines to locate information. Examples include
Mamma, Search.com,
SurfWax, Dogpile, and WebCrawler. Some search engines of
particular interest to you
specialize in academic searching; these include Magportal,
Scirus, and Google Scholar.

Online magazines and websites
If you already know of specific websites, you can visit them
directly and use the home
page’s search box to type in your key terms. Useful websites to
visit include those of
magazines and newspapers, both general-interest and special-
interest. (If you don’t know
the full web address of a magazine or newspaper, google it.)
The following table shows
some possible online resources:
MAGAZINES NEWSPAPERS WEBSITES
Time Daily Telegraph (paywall) BBC.co.uk
Newsweek Daily Mail CNN.com
New Scientist New York Times (paywall) Refdesk.com
Scientific American Washington Post Internet Public Library
Popular Science Financial Times How Stuff Works
Science Illustrated Herald Tribune CNET
Science Arab News ZNET
Science News Saudi Gazette Science Daily

The Economist eHow
Business Week
PC World
PC Mag
Wired
Popular Mechanics
Popular Electronics
Discover Magazine
Air & Space
You may find that some publications are behind a paywall,
meaning that they are
accessible only through subscription. An example is The Times
newspaper of London.
The New York Times has a more flexible paywall in place:
visitors are allowed to read ten
free articles per month, after which a fee must be paid. It should
also be remembered that,

if you find that a particular publication is behind a paywall, it is
possible that the
University subscribes to it so the magazine in question could
still be accessible through
the Summon search engine. Most websites offer free access to
all current articles and
archives (ie, copies of past articles).
Key search terms
The key to effective searching—whether through the Library’s
Summon portal or through
the Internet—is to have good search terms. In general, the
narrower you make your
search, the fewer, and the more relevant, the results will be.
For example, supposing your
term report task was to discuss the problems of e-commerce
security, you could start your
Internet search with Google:
-commerce will bring you over 600 million hits.
-commerce security will produce 200 million.
-commerce security problems will produce over 30
million.

-commerce security problems and solutions will
bring 20 million hits.
The numbers are still enormous but, as the results are arranged
by relevance, you need
only concentrate on the first couple of pages of results in order
to find a suitable article.
With Google, you can usually ignore the first three or four
entries on a results page as
they are likely to consist of paid-for advertisements:
Advertisements
The first ‘real’ article
After using a search engine, try visiting the website of a
specific magazine, for example
The Economist magazine (www.economist.com). Type your
search terms into the search
box on the magazine’s home page: The next page you receive
will show all The

Economist articles that contain your search terms.
Click on an article to read it. If you think it will be useful for
your term report, print it out
directly from the Internet rather than copying & pasting it into a
Word document. This
will give you the full bibliographic details which you will need
to write the APA Works
Cited reference. (If you copy & paste, you may lose some
important bibliographic
information that your teacher will want to see.)
Refining your search terms
So far, we have mentioned how using multiple key words can
help you to narrow your

search and obtain more relevant sources. You can refine your
search terms still further by
using Boolean operators (AND, NOT and OR), quotation marks,
parentheses, and
asterisks.
Boolean operators
The use of AND will narrow your search. (Note, however, that
in most search engines,
including Google and Summon, the AND operator is the default
and so it can be omitted.
For example, hubble telescope problems is the same as hubble
AND telescope AND
problems. The search engine will look for these key words in all
the documents it
searches and will deliver only those documents that contain all
of the search terms.
Enter your search terms
A selection of articles will appear.
Choose one that looks promising.

The use of the OR connector will widen your search. For
example, entering hubble OR
telescope will produce documents which contain the word
hubble or the word telescope
or which contain both hubble and telescope. It will produce far
more documents than
simply entering hubble telescope. If you are interested in other
types of telescope besides
the Hubble Telescope, this could be useful. If you are only
interested in the Hubble
Telescope, it isn’t.
The use of the NOT operator will narrow your search by
excluding certain words from
the results. For example, if you enter the key search term hubble
NOT telescope, you will
receive documents that contain the word hubble but which do
not contain the word
telescope.
Quotation marks “ “
Another refinement is to put quotation marks (“...”) around your

search term. Like the
AND and NOT operators, this will narrow your search. The
quotation marks tell the
search engine to search the term as a complete phrase and not as
separate words. For
example, by entering “hubble space telescope,” you will receive
only documents that
contain those three consecutive words. Compare this with
entering hubble space
telescope or hubble AND space AND telescope, which will
produce many thousands
more documents all of which contain those three words either
together or separately.
Parentheses ( )
Parentheses (round brackets) enable you to combine Boolean
operators and so perform
two different searches at the same time. The combination of
NOT and OR will limit your
search while the combination of AND and OR will expand it.
For example,
“renewable energy” NOT (tidal OR current OR wave) will
enable you to find

alternative sources of energy but not those involving tidal, wave
or current-generated
energy.
“nuts” AND (allergy OR “food poisoning”) will search for
articles about nuts as they
relate either to allergies or to food poisoning.
Wildcard *
An asterisk (*) can be placed anywhere in a word though it is
most effective at the end.
It will expand your search by finding different forms of the
asterisked word. For example,
motivat* will search for all forms of the word, such as motivate,
motivation,
motivational, motivator, and so on.
employ* will search for employer, employee, employment,
employed, and so on.

Documenting sources
See also Successful Writing at Work, pp. 328 – 336 and 352 –
354.
When you locate a useful source, you should write a reference
for it and add it to your
working bibliography, which is an evolving list of your
potential sources. Documentation
also involves citing the source in your writing whenever you
take an idea from it. In
English 214, you will use only the APA style to compile your
references and to make
your in-text citations.
References
Your English 214 textbook gives a fairly comprehensive
selection of APA references on
pages 331 to 336 and a model reference list on pages 352 to
354. The following pages
give information about the various elements that comprise a
reference and give some

examples of the references that you are most likely to use in
your report.
Your reference list, titled References, will appear at the end of
your report. It consists of
all the sources of information that you cited in the report
(except for personal
communications such as letters and interviews—see page 3). Its
purpose is to enable the
reader to identify and retrieve the information you used. The
reference list is double-
spaced; it is arranged in alphabetical order according to the
author’s last name; and the
first line of each entry has a hanging indent. (See SWAW pp.
352 – 354.)
Print sources
References can be classified into print and electronic sources.
Both typically consist of
the author name, the date of publication, the title of the work,
and the publication data.
Authors and editors
Place the family name first followed by the initials for up to

seven different authors. The
last author name follows an ampersand (&). For eight or more
authors, write the first six,
insert three ellipsis points ( ... ), and then write the last author
without an ampersand. If
the work is an edited book, place the editor(s) in the author
position with (Ed.) or (Eds.)
in parentheses. If there is no author, move the title to the author
position. End this
element with a full stop (period).
Kolin, P. C.
Thompson, K. A, Jones, B. B., & Wilson, C. D.
Williams, J. C (Ed.)
Date of publication
For books and journals, give the year of publication in
parentheses after the author name
(or title if there is no author). For magazines and newspapers,
give the year and the
exact date (the month; the day and month; or the season)
separated by a comma. If the

article has no date, write n.d. (“no date”) in parentheses. Write
a full stop (period) after
the closing parenthesis.
Kolin, P. C. (2012).
Walker, D. U. & Johnson, B. L. (2012, August).
Collins, P. T., Cameron, D. D., & Suleiman, S. G. (2012,
September 1).
Peters, T. L. (2011, Winter).
Donald, F. W. (n.d.).
Titles
For an article or chapter title, capitalize only the first word of
the title. If there is a sub-
title, capitalize the first word. Capitalize any proper nouns in
the title or sub-title. Do not
use italics or quotation marks for article or chapter titles. If the
chapter appears in an
edited collection, indicate this after the chapter title. End with a
full stop.
Abbot, A. B. (2012). The use of style guides in report writing.

Al-Awani, M. (2012, July). Global warming: Challenges for the
future.
Haybron, D. M. (2008). Protecting London from tidal flooding.
In M. Hartley (Ed.),
Rising waters in Europe (pp. 214-236).
For the titles of periodicals such as journals, magazines and
newspapers, give the name
in full using upper- and lower-case letters, and italicize the
whole title. Place a comma
after a periodical title.
future. The
Environmental Monthly,
Bin Salman, A. B. (2011, May 15). Fast food and the rise of
obesity in the USA. The
Washington Post,
For the title of any non-periodical works, such as a book or
report, capitalize only the first
word (and the first word of any sub-title), and any proper nouns.
Italicize the title. If the

publication requires additional information such as an edition
number, give this in
parentheses immediately after the title without any preceding
punctuation. End this
element with a full stop.
Kolin, P. C. (2012). Successful writing at work (3rd ed.).
Philips, T. & Philips, A. (2008). Writing skills in English.
Publication data (volume, issue, pages)
For journals and magazines, give the italicized volume number
after the periodical title.
If each issue of the periodical is paginated separately (ie, each
issue starts at page 1), add
the unitalicized issue number in parentheses immediately after
the volume number, eg
54(3). (Note: while a journal article always requires a volume
number or volume and
issue number, these are sometimes omitted for magazines.) Give
the journal and

magazine page numbers without a preceding p. or pp.
Newspapers do not require a
volume or issue number, and a newspaper’s page numbers must
be preceded by p. (for a
one-page article) or pp. (for two or more pages). For journals,
magazines and
newspapers, all non-consecutive page numbers must also be
given. Do not give publisher
names and locations for any periodicals. End this element with a
full stop.
Abingdon, M. J. (2012). Designing an integrated transport
system in Montreal.
Canadian Journal of Transport, 65, 223-236.
future. The
Environmental Monthly, 56(4), 25-28.
The rise and fall of the euro. (2012, May 12). Business Week,
35(16), 3, 8, 12-13.
Grey, P. S. (2011, August 15). Anti-malarial nets prove a
success in sub-Saharan
Africa. The Daily Telegraph, p. 16.
For books, you must give the location of the publisher (ie, the

city and state for the USA,
or, outside the USA, the city and country), followed by a colon
and the name of the
publisher. For US states, you will need to know the two-letter
abbreviations. Do not give
page numbers for books, but you should give the page numbers
for a chapter that appears
in an edited work. End this element with a full stop.
Boston, MA:
Wadsworth Cengage.
Pond, I. R. (2004). Cigarettes and advertising. London, United
Kingdom: Penguin.
Shotton, B. C. (1998). The mountains of Asia. In D. Wilson &
T. Smith (Eds.), A guide
to the world’s mountain ranges (pp. 231-265). New York, NY:
Routledge.
Browne, A. J. (2003). Transformers. In Encyclopedia of
electrical engineering (Vol.
20, pp. 113-128). London, United Kingdom: Random House.
Electronic sources

While print sources refer to the hard copy, paper editions of
books, periodicals, reports,
dissertations, and so on, electronic sources are those
informational materials that have
been obtained online, whether through a Library database or the
Internet. Typically,
electronic sources follow the same rules for author, titles, date
and publication data that
were outlined above for print sources, but they also contain an
element to identify them
as having a digital origin. In order to write references for a
variety of electronic sources,
you need to know about URLs and DOIs.
URLs and DOIs
URLs
You should already be familiar with the URL (“uniform
resource locator”). Basically, it

is an Internet address consisting of the protocol (http://), the
domain or host name
(kfupm.edu.sa), and some other information that provides a path
to a specific document:
http://www.kfupm.edu.sa/SitePages/en/atozindex.aspx
When writing a reference for an Internet source, you will have
to include the document
URL after the words Retrieved from. The APA recommends you
give the URL only for
the website home page if the article can be easily located.
However, in English 214, you
should always give the full URL. To compose your reference,
copy and paste the URL
given in your browser address window directly into a Word
document. Do not write a full
stop after the URL.
Many of your electronic sources will be retrieved from a
database. Should you include
the database information in the URL? This is what the APA
Publication Manual says:
“In general, it is not necessary to include database information.

Journal coverage
in a particular database may change over time; also, if using an
aggregator such as
... ProQuest ... it may be unclear exactly which database
provided the full text of
the article.” (p. 192)
(For a fuller discussion of databases and references, see the
OWL website at:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/.) The
examples below are of the
online versions of a magazine, a journal, an encyclopedia, a
book, and a nonperiodical
web document. As a general rule, include page numbers in your
periodical reference if
they are given in the online document; otherwise, omit them.
Europe’s Achilles heel. (2012, May 12). Economist. Retrieved
from
http://www.economist.com/node/21554530
Steptoe, A. & Sohn, H. (2012). Investment in small-to-medium
enterprises: An east
London case study. E-Journal of Historical Studies,
2(3), 26-34. Retrieved from

http://www.ejhs/studies/060912/smelondon/
Map. (2012). In Encyclopædia Britannica online. Retrieved
from
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/363506/map
O’Dell, R. (2012). Indoor sports. Retrieved from
http://www.sportsbooks.com/html/osr/
Spiegelhalter, D. (2012, May 11). Road safety: Do more cars
mean more accidents?
Retrieved from
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120510-more-cars-more-
accidents
DOI
There are sometimes problems with Internet sources. Links, for
example, can break
temporarily or disappear permanently, meaning that the URL
will no longer work. For
this reason, a group of international publishers devised the DOI,

standing for “digital
object identifier.” The DOI system allocates a unique,
permanent alphanumeric string to
an online document, which points to its location on the Internet.
If an electronic
periodical article has been assigned a DOI, you will usually find
the number on the first
page close to any copyright information, and also on the
database information page for
the article.
The APA recommends that the DOI, if available, should always
be used in place of the
URL. As with the URL, there is no full stop after the DOI.
When writing the DOI, use
lower-case letters followed by a colon—doi: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The article below was found through Summon. Note the DOI top
left. The reference for
this journal is given below:
Clampin, M., Lumb, D., Sirianni, M. & Smith, E. (2005).
Detectors for space science:

Future requirements and considerations for flight detectors.
Experimental
Astronomy, 19, 45-67. doi: 10.1007/s10686-005-9010-5
http://www.springerlink.com/content/?Author=Mark+Clampin
http://www.springerlink.com/content/?Author=David+Lumb
http://www.springerlink.com/content/?Author=Marco+Sirianni
http://www.springerlink.com/content/?Author=Edward+Smith
Son of Citation Machine
The APA rules for writing references are even more
complicated than the above
description suggests. A helpful tool for making references is
Son of Citation Machine,
which is available at: http://citationmachine.net/index2.php.
1. Enter the website and select APA from the menu on the left.
The following page will
appear:
2. From the menu on the left, select PRINT or NONPRINT, and
then your source type,

for example online newspaper article. Fill in the boxes
according to the instructions:
The APA has been selected.
An online newspaper has no
pages so leave this box blank.
Copy & paste the URL from
your browser’s address box.
Click here when everything
has been entered accurately.
3. The following screen will appear after clicking on Make
Citation:
4. Copy and paste the citation into your Reference list. Check
carefully that it conforms
to APA guidelines for an online newspaper article and that it is
correctly formatted:

Warman, M. (2012, May 12). Google brings driverless cars to
the road. Daily Telegraph.
Retrieved from
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/9257532/Google-
brings-driverless-cars-to-the-road.html
Almost all the sources you are likely to need have been
described and exemplified above.
These include both print and electronic versions of books,
edited books, encyclopedias,
journals, magazines, newspapers, and web pages. You will find
other types—such as blog
posts, emails, podcasts, and interviews—on pages 332 to 336 of
the 214 textbook,
Successful Writing at Work.
In-text citations
Whenever you take an idea from a source and use it in your
writing, you must tell the
reader where you found the idea by documenting it in the text of
your report. These in-

text citations refer the reader to your Reference list at the end
of your report, which he
can use to check the accuracy of your writing or to follow up on
any points of interest.
You must read pages 328 to 330 of Successful Writing at Work.
These pages explain
about the need for documentation and identify which sources
need to be documented and
which do not.
The APA uses the author-date system for in-text citations,
which requires the author’s
family name and the year of publication. Give only the year
even if the reference, for
example that of a newspaper article, also includes the month
and day.
Apart from the author and the year of publication, you should
also include any help you
can give the reader to locate the exact information you are
citing. When quoting
material, this additional help is a requirement. For paraphrasing

and summarising, the
APA “encourages” writers to provide the extra help. However,
in English 214, you must
always provide the extra help regardless of whether you are
quoting, paraphrasing or
summarising.
For print sources, this additional help will almost always
involve the page number (which
follows a ‘p.’ or ‘pp.’). For electronic sources that have no page
numbers—such as most
website articles—there are several possibilities:
umbers but the
paragraphs of the article are
numbered, give the paragraph number using the abbreviation
para, eg (Jones,
2011, para. 3).
paragraph numbers but it
has section headings, give the section heading followed by the
number of the
paragraph from which the idea was taken: eg (Al-Qahtani, 2012,
Recent
Developments, para. 2)

abbreviate it and place
it within quotation marks: eg (Smith, 2009, “How long will,”
para. 6)
The full title of the section heading above is How long will the
waves take to reach other countries?
For electronic sources, you must not manufacture your own
page numbers. For example,
if you print out a four-page source from the BBC website, you
cannot number these pages
1 to 4. You must, instead, follow the APA rules outlined above
and use paragraph
numbers and section headings to give your readers the extra
help they need to locate the
source information you used.
Some examples of in-text citations are given below:
Reference:
Boston, MA:
Wadsworth Cengage.

In-text-citation:
Kolin (2012) said that there was no need to document well-
known dates, such
as the July 1969 moon landing (p. 329).
There is no need to document well-known dates, such as the
July 1969 moon
landing (Kolin, 2012, p. 329).
Reference:
Miller, T. A. & Baker, C. (2008). Deep-sea exploration in the
Mariana Trench. Journal of
Oceanography, 14(4), 72-85. Retrieved from
http://www.joc/articles/212343/
marianatrench/
In-text-citation:
Miller and Baker (2008) identified the main risk of deep-sea
diving as

hypothermia (“Hypothermia at,” para. 3).
The main risk of deep-sea diving has been identified as
hypothermia (Miller &
Baker, 2008, “Hypothermia at,” para. 3).
In the example above, note the use of the ampersand (&)
between the author names in the
parenthetical citation. When two authors appear in the text, the
word “and” is used.
If a work has no author, use the first few words of the title and
the year. Use quotation
marks (“...”) around the titles of articles, chapters or web pages.
Use italics for the titles
of periodicals, books, brochures or reports:
Reference
Greeks on the brink: Exit beckons. (2012, April). Business
Monthly. Retrieved from
http://www.businessmonthly.com/eurotrade/09042012
In-text-citation:

Leaders at the G8 summit all expressed a desire for the Greek
economy to
recover and stay within the euro zone (“Greeks on the,” 2012,
para. 1).
It is possible to have more than one citation for a particular
idea: include both citations, in
alphabetical order, within the same parentheses, and separate
them with a semi-colon:
Reference
Johnson, M. F. & Watkins, B. (2012, September 1). EU
unemployment rises in
second quarter. Daily Trader, p. 8.
New jobless figures paint gloomy picture. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.econblog.com/news/govstats/article/
In-text citation
Despite hopes for an upward trend in the August job data, the
most recent
statistics point to a continuing increase in unemployment among
struggling
economies (Johnson & Watkins, 2012; “New jobless,” n.d.).

Multiple authors
In the in-text citations above, there have been one or two
authors. However, it is quite
likely you will encounter sources, especially journal articles,
that have three or more
authors. The rules for citing multiple authors are quite complex.
They depend on whether
the authors are (1) being cited for the first time or subsequent
times, and whether (2) the
parenthetical citations are being given for the first time or
subsequent times. See the table
below, paying particular attention to the use of “et al.”
(meaning “and the others”); the
use of “and” or the ampersand in parenthetical citations; the use
of square brackets; and
the use of punctuation (commas and full stops).
You can refer to the table below for guidance, or, for a less
detailed description, visit the
OWL website at
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/03/.

Basic citation styles
Type
First citation in
the text
Subsequent
citations in the
text
First
parenthetical
citation
Subsequent
parenthetical
citations
One author
Coe (2012)

Coe (2012)
(Coe, 2012)
(Coe, 2012)
Two authors
Coe and Kent
(2008)
Coe and Kent
(2008)
(Coe & Kent,
2008)
(Coe & Kent,
2008)
Three authors
Coe, Kent, and
Jones (2010)

Coe et al. (2010)
(Coe, Kent, &
Jones, 2010)
(Coe et al., 2010)
Four authors Coe, Kent, Jones,
and Smith (2011)
Coe et al. (2011) (Coe, Kent, Jones,
& Smith, 2011)
(Coe et al., (2011)
Five authors
Coe, Kent, Jones,
Smith, and Dunn
(2007)
Coe et al. (2007)
(Coe, Kent, Jones,
Smith, & Dunn,
2007)

(Coe et al., 2007)
Six or more
Coe et al. (2005)
Coe et al. (2005)
(Coe et al., 2005)
(Coe et al., 2005)
Groups with
recognisable
abbreviation
World Health
Organisation
(WHO, 2012)
WHO (2012)
(World Health
Organisation

[WHO], 2012)
(WHO, 2012)
Groups with no
recognisable
abbreviation
University of
Cambridge (2009)
University of
Cambridge (2009)
(University of
Cambridge, 2009)
(University of
Cambridge, 2009)
Personal communications

Personal communications are cited in the text of your report
but, according to APA rules,
do not appear in your Reference list. Examples of personal
communications include
memos, private letters, interviews, telephone calls and certain
unrecoverable electronic
communications like emails and bulletin board messages that
have not been archived.
To cite a personal communication in your report, give the name
of the person involved,
write personal communication, and give the date. For example,
if, as part of the information-
gathering for your major report, you interviewed a professor in
your department, Dr.
Ahmed Mohammed Al-Suwaidan, you would cite any
information you take from this
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/03/
interview in one of the following ways:
In a joint enterprise, Saudi Arabia and Sudan are hoping to

extract large
deposits of gold, silver and copper from the Red Sea within the
next three
years (A. M. Al-Suwaidan, personal communication, September
9, 2012).
Dr. Ahmed Al-Suwaidan, KFUPM professor of Petroleum
Engineering, has
stated that, in a joint enterprise, Saudi Arabia and Sudan are
hoping to extract
large deposits of gold, silver and copper from the Red Sea
within the next three
years (personal communication, September 9, 2012).
For the use of in-text citations with APA quotation, see Unit 1c.
HOW TO CHOOSE A TITLE FOR YOUR REPORT
YOUR TITLE MUST NOT JUST “DESCRIBE” SOMETHING.
IT HAS TO “SOLVE A PROBLEM” OR “SUGGEST A
BETTER WAY” OR “HOW SOMETHING WILL CHANGE”
OR “WHY SOMETHING IS BETTER THAN SOMETHING
ELSE” OR “HOW SOMETHING CAN BE DONE IN A
BETTER WAY”…..ETC. BUT YOU CAN’T JUST DESCRIBE
SOMETHING. YOU CAN DESCRIBE SOMETHING IN YOUR
INTRODUCTION……THAT’S OK…..BUT THEN YOU HAVE
TO WRITE ABOUT ANOTHER ASPECT TO THE THEME.
FOR EXAMPLE, A TITLE LIKE “WHAT ARE FAST FOODS”

IS NOT ACCEPTABLE BECAUSE YOU WOULD JUST
DESCRIBE WHAT FAST FOODS ARE…..NOT MUCH
RESEARCH REALLY. YOUR TITLE SHOULD BE
SOMETHING LIKE “WHY FRESH FOOD IS BETTER THAN
FAST FOOD” IN WHICH YOU COMPARE THE TWO AND
COME TO SOME KIND OF CONCLUSION.
REMEMBER, YOUR TITLE SHOULD HAVE SOME
RELATION TO YOUR KFUPM MAJOR
THEME FOR 214 (FOOD) Sample REPORT TITLES
These are only samples –Don't choose one of these for your
report.
----- To find a title, do research…..check Wikipedia,
magazines, google, etc, to give you ideas about a title. You
can't just "think" about it….you have to look all over the place
for ideas. (Only English…no Arabic)
1. LIPOSUCTON: Food’s Final Frontier
2. Achieving Food Security in (Africa)
3. Canned Food: A cheap alternative to fresh food
4. New Concepts in Restaurant Construction
5 Some solutions to health problems associated with fast foods
6 How nanotechnology can reduce fruit/vegetable loss
7 KSA faces future sustainable food production
8 Why fast foods are ultimately more expensive than fresh
food
9 Overpopulation and food availability: Problems and
solutions
10 Keeping food prices low in an economic depression
11. Egypt faces rising bread prices: background and possible
soloutions
12. Problems illegal and migrant workers face in farm work in
(California)
13. Are there any alternatives to using biocides?
14. Can robotics impact food production positively?
15. Food as a weapon: denying the enemy nutritional products
16. Finding ways to market new food items cheaply
17. Are genetically modified (GM) foods the wave of the

future?
18. Obesity and related health problems: background and
solutions
19. Trying to decrease cost of food production in infertile
areas
20. KSA and food subsidies: Are they sustainable?
21. The crucial and beneficial role of insects in agriculture
22. New methods to control pest infestation of crops
23. The food chain: From bacteria to whales
24. The coming water shortages (world-wide) (in KSA) etc
(and what to do about them)
25. New methods to eradicate malnutrition (in….)
26. How to have a steady food supply when draught strikes
27. Better ways to label food product additives
29. What are “new” foods and are there any health risks in
eating them?
30. Space travel and food: some problems and possible
solutions
31. ETC ETC
Unit 1a
Overview, Focusing, Audience
Planning

OVERVIEW ...........................................................................
2
FINDING A FOCUSED TOPIC
................................................... 3
Narrow down the topic ................................................... 3
Focus the topic ............................................................... 3
Examples of report topics ..................................................
4
Consult various resources ...................................................
6
Exercise ...........................................................................
8
ANALYZING YOUR AUDIENCE .......................................
9
PLANNING ...........................................................................
10
Rough plan ...........................................................................
11
Formal topic outline ...............................................................
11

1a: Overview, Audience, Focusing, Planning
In English 214, you write a report of between 1500 and 2200
words using at least six
sources found through the Library’s print and e-resources and
through the Internet. You
decide on the specific research topic yourself, one that
combines your major with a
particular theme and which typically involves the analysis of a
problem. The diagram
below sets out the basic steps in the report writing process. It
should be emphasized,
however, that writing is a recursive process: as you progress
through the various steps,
you will often be required to re-visit earlier steps, for example,
to replace a source, take

additional notes, refine an outline, or modify your report focus.
Timeline (Term 132)
Focus the
topic/Research

Research
Recruitment & Research
First Draft
Submit
Week 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
1. Find a focused topic that
combines your major with the
theme of the semester.
2. Analyze your audience. Ask
yourself how you can make a
technical report understandable
to a non-technical reader.
3. Make a rough plan, and
gradually develop it into a two-

level topic outline.
4. Find sources. Search the
Library and the Internet for
suitable sources.
6. Take notes. Use an efficient
method to record the ideas you
take from your sources.
7. Devise a three-level outline.
Expand your two-level outline
into a three-level outline.
8. Write the first draft. You
have six classes in which to
complete the first draft.
9. Revise and edit your draft.
You have about one week to
prepare the final version.
10. Submit your report.
Submit hard and soft copies to
your teacher and upload a soft
copy to Turnitin on Blackboard.

5. Evaluate your sources.
Read the sources critically to
decide if they will be useful.
Progress report Report submission Focused topic Start End
6. Make a progress
report. Describe the
current status of the report.
Finding a focused topic
Your first task—which should be completed within the first two
weeks of the semester—
is to find a suitable topic that combines your major with the
particular theme of the
semester. Typically, this topic involves the analysis of a
problem, its causes, effects and,
especially, its solutions. The problem could also be presented in
the form of an argument
or comparison. If you can, choose an area of your major which
you like or in which you

have a special interest, or select an area that is new to you,
perhaps one that you will
study in a later semester. You should view this research not as a
compulsory English
language writing task but rather as an opportunity to broaden
your understanding of a
particular area of your major.
To achieve a suitable topic the writer must typically do two
things: firstly, narrow down
his area of research and then focus on it from a particular
perspective. The aim is to find a
topic that can be discussed in sufficient detail in the limited
time and space available.
Narrow down the area of research
For example, a very broad topic such as “Mechanical
Engineering and health” would
require the length of a book to deal adequately with all the
points that could be raised.
Because “Mechanical Engineering” and “health” are two huge
fields of study, such a
topic could not meaningfully be discussed in the 1500 words of

an English 214 report.
A way to achieve a narrower research area is to investigate one
area of your major (eg
“air-conditioning systems” for ME students) and one area of the
theme; this narrowed
theme might also constitute the problem to research (eg
“respiratory problems” in the
theme of Health).
The result of this process is your narrowed topic: “respiratory
problems caused by air-
conditioning”:
Respiratory problems
Air-conditioning systems
Focus the narrowed topic

This narrowed topic could then be focused in a number of ways:
for example, by
emphasizing the causes, effects or solutions of the problem; by
making a local application
to a particular place such as Saudi Arabia; by specifying a
particular sub-group that is
Mechanical
Engineering
Health
affected by the problem; by arguing for or against a particular
position; or by making a
comparison between alternative possibilities. This combination
of a narrowed topic and a
particular focus should lead to an appropriate topic for an
English 214 report, for example
“Measures to Reduce the Respiratory Problems Caused by Air-
Conditioning Systems.”

effects causes
argument solutions
particular sub-group
local application
comparison
You must judge at what point you have reached an appropriately
narrowed and focused
topic. If you continue to narrow down your area of research to a
smaller and smaller area,
you will soon reach the point where you will have a problem
finding the sources.
Too general: Mechanical Engineering and Health
Too general: Air-Conditioning and Health
Too specific: An Analysis of Infectious Respiratory Diseases
Caused by
Evaporative Air-Conditioning Systems: A Case Study of
Female Office Workers in New York

Appropriate: Measures to Reduce the Respiratory Problems
Caused by Air-
Conditioning Systems
Examples of report topics
Every student starts at the same point: with his major, the
theme, and about two weeks in
which to find a narrowed, focused topic like the ones
exemplified below:
MAJOR
narrowed to:
THEME
narrowed to:
PROBLEM
SWE

information
security
Business &
Industry
business data
Lack of security in online
business systems
focused to:
The application of cryptography in protecting sensitive online
business
data
MAJOR
narrowed to:
THEME

narrowed to:
PROBLEM
MKT
advertising ethics
Health
excessive sugar Unethical targeting of children in
sugar-rich breakfast cereal ads
focused to:
An argument in support of stricter legislation for the advertising
of
breakfast cereals to children
Aircon
systems &
respiratory

problems
MAJOR
narrowed to:
THEME
narrowed to:
PROBLEM
GEOP
seismic
prediction
Natural &

Man-made
Disasters
earthquakes
Insufficient warning before
major earthquakes
focused to:
A comparison of two new early-warning techniques for
predicting
seismic activity along the San Andreas Fault
MAJOR
narrowed to:
THEME
narrowed to:

PROBLEM
CHEM
contaminants
Environment
groundwater
Pollution of groundwater by
gasoline
focused to:
The role of leaking fuel storage tanks in the pollution of Al-
Qassim’s
groundwater supplies
MAJOR

narrowed to:
THEME
narrowed to:
PROBLEM
AE
air traffic control
Transportation
civil aviation
Airport safety problems at take-
off and landing
focused to:
Miscommunication between air traffic control and the pilot: the

case
study of the Tenerife Airport disaster
MAJOR
narrowed to:
THEME
narrowed to:
PROBLEM
CE
well design
Natural
Resources
water wells

Saline contamination of water
wells
focused to:
The proper design of water wells to prevent saline
contamination
MAJOR
narrowed to:
THEME
narrowed to:
PROBLEM
ME
solar energy
storage

Energy
solar power
Lack of an adequate storage
method for solar energy
focused to:
The application of molten salt technology to improve the
storage of solar
energy
MAJOR
narrowed to:
THEME
narrowed to:
PROBLEM

FIN
risk management
Health
health insurance
Lack of health insurance
focused to:
Finding the right model: a comparison of the US and Saudi
health care
systems.
Consult various resources

ble of contents of a beginning textbook in your major
-interest and special-
interest periodicals
nternet
Start the process of finding a topic by asking yourself what you
already know about the
area where your major intersects with the theme. For example, a
Geology student faced
with the task of finding a GEOL topic in the theme of Business
& Industry could use a
brainstorming technique in which he writes down any ideas that
occur to him, relevant or
irrelevant, in the order that they occur. Some structure could be
supplied by separating
the ideas into two columns, one for the major and the other for

the theme.
GEOL BUSINESS & INDUSTRY
Minerals Industry needs energy
Remote sensing Electricity
Active/passive types Petroleum, gas, minerals
Satellites Oil industry exploration for new fields
Aerial photography Oil exploration statistics
Site investigations Oil consumption stats
Petroleum geology Typical oil exploration methods
Advantages of satellite imagery Problem: need for new oil
supplies
....... .......
The above lists suggest a report on the use of remote satellite
sensing to discover new oil
exploration fields which could help solve the problem of
decreasing petroleum supplies.
The Undergraduate Bulletin provides a brief description of all
the courses in your major.
It can be found at:
http://www1.kfupm.edu.sa/kfupm/admissions/undergrad_bulleti
n.pdf. Read
the descriptions in the Bulletin to see if there is a particular
course which interests you
and which could combine well with the semester’s theme.

Go to the stacks in the Library that contain the books in your
major and select a couple of
first- or second-year textbooks. Scan the tables of contents to
see if there is any promising
area of research. In addition, visit the print encyclopedias on
the plateau level and scan
the articles about your major and about the theme. Access the
Library’s e-encyclopedias
using Credo Reference or Ebrary and enter useful search terms.
In the Library, go to the current periodicals and to the bound
older copies in your major
and scan through the tables of contents for promising articles.
Do the same for current
general-interest magazines (Time, Newsweek) and special-
interest magazines (The
Economist, Business Week, New Scientist). If the Library does
not hold the hard copy

print versions, check the e-resources.
Use the Internet to do a quick search of your major, or an aspect
of your major, and the
theme. The following resulted from an EE student’s inputting of
“emf radiation and
health.” Scan the first few articles for promising ideas.
At some point during the first two weeks of the semester, make
an appointment to see
your adviser or an instructor in your major. They can furnish
you with ideas about how
your major relates to themes such as “health,” “natural
resources,” “transportation,” and
“the environment,” and can perhaps suggest promising areas of
research.
Exercise: Finding a focused topic
Suggest three possible report titles for your 214 major report.
Submit them to your teacher, if requested.

MAJOR
narrowed to:
THEME
narrowed to:
PROBLEM
Technology
focused to:
MAJOR

narrowed to:
THEME
narrowed to:
PROBLEM
Technology
focused to:
MAJOR
narrowed to:

THEME
narrowed to:
PROBLEM
Technology
focused to:

Analyzing your audience
(See also Kolin, pp. 5-10, 12-13.)
In all forms of technical writing—articles, reports, proposals,
abstracts, letters,
memoranda, and so on—a writer must know his audience (the
reader) so that he can
adapt the content, tone, style and layout of his writing
accordingly. For example, he needs
to know why his audience is reading the report, what the
audience’s attitude to the report
is, what level of education and experience the audience has, and
what the audience
already knows about the subject matter.
There are various kinds of audience—lay readers, experts,
technicians, executives, and
occasionally a combination of all or any of these. For your
purposes in this course, your
audience is located at
below. You must decide
where.
LAY EXPERT

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Experts are those readers who have a thorough knowledge of the
topic, including the

theory that underlies it and its practical applications. They may
be researchers,
professors, technicians and specialists with many years of
experience in the field and a
string of academic and professional qualifications. They may
know more about your
topic than you do.
A lay audience is made up of readers who are outside their
normal area of expertise. It
does not refer to an uneducated or necessarily non-technical
person. For example, a
Geology professor reading an article about cryptography in a
computer science magazine
is a lay reader. He has a sound mathematical background but is
likely to be unfamiliar
with the complexities of encryption, decryption and algorithms.
When your English 214
teacher reads your 214 report, he is also a lay reader though his
background knowledge of
your major may vary between ‘useful’ and ‘very limited.’
Writing for your reader

The purpose of writing a report is to communicate information
to the reader. If your
reader does not understand what you have written, the report
has failed. It may be that
you wrote an excellent report, one that would have received a
high grade if presented to a
professor in your major. However, a report written for an expert
is inappropriate for a lay
audience. It is in fact much harder to write a technical report for
a lay audience than it is
for an expert audience. In the case of the lay reader, technical
information must be
presented in a way that he can understand it despite lacking
background knowledge and
the basic terminology of the field. How can this be achieved?
Provide lay readers with the following:

n to your report
-headings
Plain English, not jargon
sections
grammar
s
many facts
and sub-sections
make reading easier
It will be difficult enough for a lay reader to grasp the

unfamiliar ideas in your report so
make it as accessible and user-friendly as possible.
Planning
(See also Kolin, pp. 33 – 36)
Having decided on a tentative focused topic for your report, you
need to think about the
content you will require. As with the first step—finding a
topic—the best place to start is
with your own knowledge. Try using a clustering technique.
With this discovery method,
you write your topic in the center of the page and then jot down
around it all the ideas
that occur to you. The example below shows the cluster pattern
made by a CHE student
writing on the theme of Business & Industry. He selected the
problems associated with
desalination plants.

pollution
energy
high cost
problems
Desalination
benefits
maintenance
abundant sea
water
reliable
marine ecology
greenhouse gases
types?
secure
alternatives?
?
dams, wells
process?

brine
history?
wastewater
With some additional background reading, you should be able to
make a rough outline to
guide your search for information. At this early stage, you
needn’t make a formal topic
outline with consistent outline notation; however, it will help to
use spacing and
indentation to show the relationships between ideas:
A rough plan
Background
The water problem in KSA
Possible solutions
Desalination
Process
Advantages
Disadvantages

A formal two-level topic outline
As you gather and read more sources, you will be able to
convert your initial rough plan
into a formal two-level topic outline before you submit your
progress report. This outline
is also likely to undergo continual modifications as you widen
and deepen your
knowledge of the subject.
Provisional report title: Securing Saudi Arabia’s Long-Term
Water Supply
Purpose statement: The specific purpose of this report is to
describe and evaluate the two most promising methods to
obtain a secure and reliable water supply for Saudi Arabia’s
domestic and industrial use.
INTRODUCTION
I. BACKGROUND
A. Historical overview
B. The current water problem in KSA
C. Population and consumption statistics
II. GROUNDWATER
A. Process of extraction
B. Benefits
C. Problems
III. DESALINATION
A. History
B. Process of production
C. Benefits

D. Problems
Conclusion
Recommendations
Next, read Unit 1b: Finding & documenting sources.
Unit 1c
Summaries & abstracts; source
evaluations; notes & outlines;
progress report; quotation
SUMMARIES & ABSTRACTS .............................................
2
Summaries ..................................................................... 2
Abstracts ..................................................................... 4
informative abstracts ................................. 4
descriptive abstracts ................................. 4
EVALUATING YOUR SOURCES ................................. 6

NOTE TAKING & OUTLINING ................................. 10
Note taking ..................................................................... 10
Outlining ..................................................................... 13
PROGRESS REPORT ............................................. 16
Example ..................................................................... 19
APA QUOTATION ......................................................... 22
Short quotations ......................................................... 22
Long quotations ......................................................... 23
Changing the original words ................................. 24
Other changes ......................................................... 25
1c: Summaries, evaluations, notes, outlines, progress report,
quotation
SUMMARIES & ABSTRACTS

Summaries
You will already be familiar with the idea of a summary from
your English 102 course, in
which you had to summarize the articles you found for your
term report. In addition,
summarizing can be an important part of note taking. (See pp.
10 to 12.)
To re-iterate, the essential purpose of a summary is to re-state
concisely the main ideas of
an article, book, or report in order to save the reader the time
and trouble of reading the
original full-length document. Summaries, in fact, can also be
made for a variety of
media including PowerPoint presentations, business meetings,
lab experiments, audio
files and TV programs. In the world of work, employees are
often asked by managers to
produce summaries of lengthy reports that the manager himself
does not have the time to
read.
The length of a summary varies according to the complexity of

the original and the
specific needs of the audience, but, generally, they are between
5% and 20% of the length
of the original. Given the large amount of content to be omitted,
it is important that
summarizers select all, and only, the significant information
contained in the original.
Include:
of the original
Exclude:
details
mmarizer’s own opinions or knowledge about the topic

-of-article bibliography
To summarize an article for a source evaluation, follow these
steps:
1. In a first reading of the article, focus on its specific purpose,
its organization and its
intended audience, and look also at any conclusions or
recommendations. In this initial
run-through, you may be helped by headings and sub-headings,
typographical clues such
as boldface and italics, lists, and informative side bars.
Remember also that good articles
and reports follow certain widely accepted formats. Knowing
where the various parts of a
document can be found will help you to find and summarize
them. However, not all
articles—for example those found on websites—will provide
you with information that is
easily accessible.

As you proceed step by step through the whole process, you
may find it helpful to work
with a hard copy—a photocopy or print-out—which you can
annotate and mark with
underlining and highlighting.
2. Having obtained an overall idea of the article and its
audience, read it again at least
twice more looking for the main ideas and any essential
supporting detail. Well-
written articles will provide you with informative topic
sentences and a logical, coherent
presentation of content. Also, pay particular attention to linking
words that, for example,
enumerate (another, secondly), compare (similarly, both),
contrast (however, whereas),
show importance (principally, crucial), and so on.
3. Gather your text annotations and notes into an outline to
guide your writing.
Summaries are generally expected to follow the sequence of the
original but, if the
original organization is weak or repetitive, your outline will
show where deletions can be

made without altering the basic meaning of the original. If you
are summarizing a report
rather than an article, you may find that the table of contents
can be used as a substitute
for your own outline.
4. With a usable outline, write the first draft. Try to paraphrase
and to be as concise as
possible. At this stage, it does not matter if the draft is wordy or
contains some source
wording. A more important aspect is the accuracy and
completeness of the content.
5. Finally, revise and edit your first draft to make an acceptable
final version. Delete
irrelevant or repeated information to make your writing more
concise; condense ideas and
combine sentences; paraphrase any source wording; make your
writing coherent by
supplying logical links between ideas. Refer continually to the
original article or report to
confirm that your summary is fair, complete and accurate.
Finally, supply a reference for
the original document so your reader knows what text your

summary is based on.
Your goal is to produce a summary that will tell your reader
everything of importance
that he needs to know. If the task is done well, the reader can
rely on your summary
without having to read the original document—the summary
should be able to stand
alone without reference to the original document. In the world
of work, such summaries
are often referred to as “executive summaries.” Typically, they
aim to save the busy
manager time by summarizing the contents of a lengthy report
and presenting him with a
list of recommendations to help him make an informed decision.
In English 214, your source evaluation summaries will help you
to better understand your
source, and they will help your teacher by giving him the
essential details of the original
article without his having to spend considerable time reading it
himself.

Abstracts
See also Successful Writing at Work pp. 324-25, 339.
The terms “summary” and “abstract” are often used
interchangeably but this is only
partly correct. There are in fact two types of abstract: an
informative abstract and a
descriptive abstract. Only the informative abstract is
comparable to a summary.
informative abstracts
The description of a summary given above broadly applies to
informative abstracts as
well. The main difference between them is that informative
abstracts tend to be shorter,
usually only a paragraph or two long, whereas summaries,
especially executive
summaries, can stretch to a couple of pages. Like summaries,
informative abstracts aim to
give readers a concise, accurate and complete re-statement of
the original document by,

for example, describing what research was carried out, the
conclusions that were arrived
at, and any recommendations for further action.
You will find an example of an informative abstract on page
339 of Successful Writing at
Work (and it is also re-printed on the next page). Like all
abstracts, it is placed early in
the report—on or immediately after the cover page—and begins
with the overall idea of
the original document that it is summarizing. Like a typical
summary, it aims to give the
reader the substantive facts of the report so that the reader does
not have to read the full
report himself. (One weakness of the abstract on page 339 is
that the writer uses the
words “we” and “our” instead of the more objective third
person. This could, however, be
defended on the grounds that the report and abstract are both
meant as internal
communication only.)
descriptive abstracts

A descriptive abstract typically consists of only two or three
sentences, perhaps fifty
words in total. Unlike an informative abstract, which can be
regarded as a substitute for
the original document, the aim of a descriptive abstract is to
help the reader decide if he
should read the original document or not. Descriptive abstracts,
therefore, state what an
article contains without providing any specific detail. For
example, while an informative
abstract will explicitly state any recommendations contained in
the original document, a
descriptive abstract is more likely merely to mention that “the
article contains a set of
recommendations.” If the reader wants to know what these
recommendations are, he must
read the original document.
Descriptive abstracts are commonly found at the start of most
journal articles and in
special books of abstracts (such as Chemical Abstracts and
Information Science
Abstracts) which are indispensable to researchers all over the
world. It should be pointed

out, however, that the distinctions between descriptive and
informative abstracts are not
always maintained in these publications: often, an academic
abstract in a journal article
will have the characteristics of both descriptive and informative
abstracts.
You will write a descriptive abstract on the cover page of your
English 214 major report.
Compare the two abstracts below. They are both based on the
model long report in
Successful Writing at Work (pp. 338 – 354), titled “Adapting
the RPM Workplace for
Multinational Employees.”
Example of an informative abstract.
Abstract
This report investigates how U.S. businesses such as RPM must

gain
a competitive advantage in today’s global marketplace by
recruiting
and retaining a multinational workforce. The current wave of
immigrants is in great demand for their technical skills and
economic ties
to their homeland. Yet many companies like ours still operate
by policies
designed for native speakers of English. Instead, we need to
adapt
RPM’s company policies and workplace environment to meet
the
cultural, religious, social, and communication needs of these
multinational workers. To do this, we need to promote cultural
sensitivity
training, both for multinationals and employees who are native
speakers
of English. Additionally, as other U.S. firms have done, RPM
should
adapt vacation schedules and daycare facilities for an increasing
multicultural workforce. Equally important, RPM needs to
ensure,
either through translations or plain-English versions, that all

documents
can be easily understood by multinational workers. RPM might
also offer
non-native speakers of English in-house language instruction
while
providing foreign language training for employees who are
native
speakers of English. (197 words)
Example of a descriptive abstract.
Abstract
This report investigates how U.S. businesses such as RPM must
gain
a competitive advantage in today’s global marketplace by
recruiting
and retaining a multinational workforce. It states the current
problem

and offers a solution. The report then sets out a number of
recommendations to achieve this solution. (47 words)
Begin the informative abstract with the
purpose (overall idea) of the original
document.
After the initial topic sentence, do not mention
“this report” or “this article” again. Rather, give
the information without further reference to the
original document.
The problem is stated.
The solution is stated.
Specific recommend-
ations are given.
This is not a composition; there is no
need for a conclusion.

Note the use of connectors
like “Instead,” “Yet,” “To
do this,” “also,” “Equally
important,” “Additionally.”
Like the other abstract, the descriptive
abstract begins with the overall idea of
the report or article.
A descriptive abstract can often be completed in about 50
words.
This type of abstract refers explicitly
to the original article or report.
It gives the main ideas of
the report, but without
specific details. This type
of abstract cannot stand
alone.
If the reader wants to know about the
solution or recommendations, he must

read the original report.
EVALUATING YOUR SOURCES
Whenever you find a potential source, you must evaluate it
before you can start using it
to write your report. Using effective search terms will increase
your chances of finding
relevant sources but many of the sources you find which look
useful at first glance may
turn out to be irrelevant after you have read them critically. The
following points set out
the criteria that will help you evaluate your sources.
1. Does the source meet your teacher’s requirements?
There is no point in using a source if it does not meet the
requirements laid
down by your teacher regarding length, newness,
bibliographical

completeness, and so on. So always check this first.
2. Is the source relevant?
You cannot judge a source simply by its title; you have to read
it first. For
example, an article titled “The Three Gorges Dam Electric
Power Plant”
may look relevant to your topic about the environmental
impacts of a dam
but it may turn out to be a highly technical description of the
turbines with
little or no useful information for your report. Your chances of
finding
relevant sources will increase if you use specific search terms
related to your
focused topic. For example, using “Three Gorges dam
environmental
impacts” is likely to yield more relevant sources than simply
using “Three
Gorges dam.” In order to write your source evaluation, you will
need to be
able to connect specific information in the source with the
corresponding

topics in your evolving plan. If you can’t, then your source is
not relevant.
3. Is the source written at an appropriate level?
Your search may turn up some sources that are too difficult to
understand or
others that are too simplistic. For example, an experimental
article in a
journal is likely to have been written on a very narrow aspect of
the general
topic with high-level information appropriate for academics and
specialists.
At the other extreme, plenty of websites are designed for high-
school
students at lower and intermediary levels, where the tone is
conversational
and informal and the ideas simplified and generalized for the
benefit of the
target audience.
4. Is the article biased?
A biased article is written from one particular point of view and
so does not

give a balanced or objective account of an issue. Often the bias
is subtle and
hard to detect; at other times, it is explicit and unmissable.
Articles in
reputable journals will typically be peer-reviewed and
consequently reliable
and objective. This is not the case for the vast amount of
information
contained in websites, particularly business websites and single-
issue
activist websites or blogs. Read carefully to see if opposing
views are
included, and included fairly; check if the tone is formal,
professional and
objective, or jokey and sarcastic; click on the “About us” link to
find out
what you can about the purpose and motives of the website.
Apart from the actual content, the writer of an article is often an
important

clue to bias. Take, for example, two articles entitled “Villagers
evacuated to
make way for dam reservoir,” one appearing on an activist
environmental
website and the other in an official Chinese government press
release. How
would you expect bias—if any—to be expressed in both
articles? If you
detect bias in an article, you may still be able to use the
information in your
report but introduce such ideas as opinion rather than fact: for
example, “the
environmental group claims that ... .”
5. Is the author competent?
An author could be one or more individuals, a government
department, an
organization, an online action group, and so on. Often, online
sources and
even certain reputable magazines like The Economist publish
anonymous
articles. We have seen above that authors can sometimes be
biased; they can

also be incompetent, disorganised and unintentionally
misleading. As a
general rule, it is always better to use reputable sources with
named authors.
Sometimes, the source will include a short biography of the
author which
will indicate his expertise and reliability; if it doesn’t, you may
be able to
google the author yourself and uncover his background. Is he an
expert in
the field or simply someone with an interest in it? Has he
published before
in this field? How long has he worked in this field? Is he well
known? These
are some of the questions that will help you determine if the
author is
competent. If he is, the article is more likely to be credible and
reliable.
6. Does the source deal in facts or opinions?
Facts are pieces of information that can be proved to be true.
For example,
“the installed capacity of the Three Gorges Dam make it the
biggest power

station in the world” is a fact that can be verified by
government statistics
and academic research. On the other hand, opinions are ideas or
beliefs
about a particular topic, such as “The Three Gorges Dam project
is an
environmental disaster.” An opinion is not necessarily wrong
but, to be
credible, it must always be supported by solid evidence. So read
your
sources critically to see if the author is providing facts or
opinions. If it’s the
latter, then he must also provide sufficient evidence to support
his opinions
and make them credible.
7. Currency
“Currency” refers to the relevance of information based on its

date of
publication. Students sometimes find sources which contain
apparently
useful information but which is already out of date. For
example, a 2012
source might mention an international conference to be held the
following
year to discuss the environmental impacts of the Three Gorges
Dam. The
source sounds promising. However, since that conference has
already taken
place—in 2013—it makes more sense to find a newer article
from late 2013
or 2014 that deals with the actual outcome of that conference.
Take care,
therefore, with older sources; always try to be current with your
information. If the article has no date, be suspicious.
Writing a source evaluation
You must use at least six sources to write your major report and

you must write a source
evaluation for at least three of them. An example of a typical
source evaluation is given
on the following page. Notice that it contains three parts:
First, briefly explain how you found the source, including any
search
terms, databases or search engines you used. Secondly, provide
complete
bibliographical information in the form of an APA reference.
Read the whole article and then write a summary of about 100
words. This
is a summary paraphrase so you must use your own words.
Begin with the
overall idea of the source, followed by its main points.
This is the most important section. Explain in about 100 words
why you
chose the article. Address some of the criteria mentioned above.
Try and
link the content of the article to the topics on your outline.

ENGLISH 214 SOURCE EVALUATION # 1
NAME: Ali Al-Ali ID: 201112340 SEC/SN: 99 / 28
REPORT TITLE (Provisional): The Effects of the Chernobyl
Nuclear Disaster
1. THE SOURCE
How long is your source? 3 pages.
How did you find the source?: I typed in “Chernobyl
nuclear disaster effects” into the Summon search
engine. This article was the third on the list.
Write a complete APA reference for your source:

Day, A. (2013, November 18) Cleaning up the Chernobyl
mess.
Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/123BD33
2. SUMMARY OF THE SOURCE
In about100 words, summarize the main points of your
source.
This article discusses the main effects of the Chernobyl
nuclear explosion that
happened in Ukraine in 1986. It firstly explains the main
cause of the disaster,
human error, and then discusses the main effects both in the
local area and in
Europe as a whole. It gives statistics on the number of
people who became ill
with cancer over the following 20 years and it describes how
farming in Europe
was severely affected for several years. It concludes with the
methods used to try
and clean up the radioactivity that had fallen in Europe.
3. EVALUATION:
In about 100 words, explain why you chose this source for
your report.

Relevance: connect relevant parts of the source with your
outline.
Article: what level is it? How up-to-date is the
information?
Publication / website / author: are they reputable, unbiased
and knowledgeable?
I chose this article because it is relevant to the main parts of
my report. First, it
contains information about the type of nuclear plant, which
fits in my Background
Section and it has some brief information about the reasons
for the explosion,
which belongs in the Causes section of my report. Most of
the article, however, is
concerned with my main idea, which is the effects of the
explosion and the problem
of cleaning up.
The BBC is a reliable website and the level of the article is
aimed at the average
reader. The article is quite new, less than six months old, so
it has the latest
information about the disaster. I googled the author, Agnes

Day, and she has been
the BBC’s science editor for the past 15 years so is
knowledgeable on this subject.
NOTE TAKING
With a workable rough plan and a source that has passed a
thorough evaluation, you are
ready to start taking notes. Note taking is simply a way to
record the information you
have read so you won’t forget it. There are a number of ways to
do this ranging from
short annotations in the margins of sources to large-scale copy
& paste techniques on a
computer and the use of special note-taking applications such as
Evernote and Google
Notes. Your teacher will instruct you in whichever method he
prefers.
However, regardless of the method that is eventually used, all

students are expected to be
familiar with one very common method of note-taking: note
cards.
The advantage of using the card method is that it allows
information to be manipulated
easily. As you obtain new information, you can add cards to the
pack, remove cards from
it, or re-arrange the cards in a better order. To do this
efficiently, every note card based
on a source must contain a reference to the topic of the note and
to the author and source
page number.
The notes you make will mainly consist of information
extracted from a source, which is
then summarized, paraphrased and condensed into its essential
meaning using numbers,
symbols, abbreviations, and so on. This type of note is often
referred to as a “condensed
extract.” Notes could also include quotations, statistics, simple
illustrations, and
reminders to yourself of work that needs doing. For a report of
1500 words or more, a

student should have a minimum of 60 note cards.
A typical note card contains information on one topic only, is
written on one side only,
and contains three pieces of information: the topic, the source
and the note:
Topic Source
Habitat loss: deforestation (Jackson, 2013, p.11)
30% of Amaz r-forest lost in last 20 yrs.
wood used for furniture exports
Note
As a general rule, it is better to take more notes than you think
you will need. It is only
through ongoing research that you sharpen your focus and cover

your topic completely so
that notes that once seemed relevant may later become
unimportant. So, take lots of
notes, but be prepared to discard many of them.
The topic
Each information card must contain a note on a single topic.
Indicate this topic using two
or three words at the top left of the card. Ideally, these topic
indicators should correspond
to your outline topics. In general, notes should only appear
together on the same card if
they will appear together later in the same paragraph or section
of your report. If it is
clear that two notes on the same general topic will be used in
different parts of the report,
they should be written on different cards. A single note need not
be restricted to the space
available on one card; if necessary, continue the note on another
card.
When you have finished note taking, the topics you wrote top
left will help you to

rearrange your cards according to your evolving outline. Later
on in this note-taking
stage, you can also add some outline notation (e.g. II.B.1) to
each topic, showing exactly
where each information card belongs in relation to your outline;
however, this is only
advisable if you are working with the final version of your
outline.
The source
Write a short bibliographical reference at the top right of each
note card to indicate the
source of the information. Write the author's name or, if the
article has no author, the first
couple of words of the title in quotation marks, together with
the relevant page number,
section heading or paragraph number. If you enclose these
source details in parentheses
(round brackets), and include the year of publication, then your
card will already show
the documentation you will need when you expand the note later
in the first draft, for
example (Jackson, 2013, p.4).

The note
You cannot rely on your memory when you have so many
sources to read so note taking
will provide the essential link between reading and writing. As
you summarize,
paraphrase and condense the original idea onto your card, take
care to record the idea
accurately. If you are quoting, record the quotation and the
accompanying bibliographical
information exactly.
Examples
When you select a useful piece of information from a source,
try to formulate the
essential idea in your own mind. Summarize this—in your own
words as far as
possible—in condensed form on your note card. Use
indentations, spacing, numbers,
abbreviations and symbols to speed up the process, but be sure
that the notes you take
will still be intelligible later when you come to write the first

draft.
Condensed extract
Solar ponds: basic principle (Sale, 2013, p. 127)
Heated freshwater at bott. of pond ↑
then loses heat to atm.
But, saline layer at bott. more dense than FW above
so cannot rise
remains at bottom,
temp. ↑ to 100 deg.C
This heat can be used for elect. prod.
Original source
Thanks to solar ponds, the salt in the
Colorado River could be put to

beneficial purposes. Normally, when
water at the bottom of a freshwater
pond is heated, it rises to the
surface, where it loses heat to the
atmosphere. However, a pond with a
layer of saline water at the bottom
works differently. It warms up and
attempts to rise, but cannot because
the salt is much denser than the
freshwater above. So, it remains
trapped and continues to heat up to
boiling point. The heat harnessed
from such ponds is able to generate
electricity.
Quotation
Occasionally, you may want to record a quotation on your note
card but, first, find out

what restrictions your teacher has placed on the number and
length of the quotations that
he will allow in your report. Select your quotations carefully:
writers quote other writers
in order to support their ideas and the quotations used are often
chosen because they
express an idea particularly succinctly or memorably. Never
quote original wording
simply because you do not know how to paraphrase the idea.
In the example card below, notice how the quotation is enclosed
in quotation marks and
the identity of the original speaker is given. If you need to
change the original wording,
follow the rules outlined later in this unit.
Original
Geologists have direct evidence that sea-floor
spreading and plate tectonics have shaped the
Earth's surface for the past 200 million years.
Indirect evidence for plate tectonics goes

back a billion years, but the oldest continents
are much more ancient, 2.5 billion years old.
What forces shaped that ancient Earth?
Eldridge M. Moores, a geologist at the
University of California at Davis, suggests
that it may have been a different form of
plate tectonics, producing terrain that in
some ways resembles modern Venus
Topic Source Note
Form. of E's surface: PT (Erdmann, 2013, p.65)
Eldridge M. Moores, geologist, U of C at Davis:
"a different form of plate tectonics, producing
terrain that . . . resembles modern Venus."
Original speaker
context
quotation

source topic
OUTLINING
When you first start taking notes on your sources, you may have
only a very basic outline
to guide you. The more you read, however, the more
information you will obtain and so
you will gradually be able to modify that first rough outline.
Parts of that outline may
need to be deleted while other parts can be retained with some
minor adjustments.
Mainly, however, you should be able to expand and fill the gaps
in that initial plan.
As your initial plan grows, the relationships between the parts
will become more
numerous and complex and so it will become necessary to
produce a more formal outline
using indentations and standard outline notation. During the
research stage of report
writing—while you are finding sources, reading them and taking

notes—your teacher
will require from you an evolving formal two-level topic
outline.
The following points illustrate some general characteristics of
outlines.
Informal and formal outlines
Outlines can be informal or formal. Those written for the writer
alone can be quite
informal, with little attention paid to the various outlining
conventions. Informal
outlines—also referred to as rough or scratch outlines—are
typically the starting-point of
a piece of writing. However, outlines that are also written for
other readers—like those
you write for your English teacher or those which are intended
to form the plan for longer
pieces of writing such as reports—should follow certain
accepted standards of formatting.
These are formal outlines.
Topic and sentence outlines

Formal outlines can be topic outlines or sentence outlines. As
the names suggest, topic
outlines consist of “topics,” usually consisting of just a few
words, while sentence
outlines convey the ideas in full sentences.
In this English 214 course, you will use only topic outlines. In a
formal topic outline,
headings consist of single words, phrases or clauses, and they
should begin with a capital
letter. Full sentences should not be included, except for the
initial thesis statement that
precedes the outline. All headings on the same level should be
grammatically parallel
with one another, that is, they should all be nouns or noun
phrases, all verbs or verb
phrases, or all clauses.
Traditional and numerical outlines
Formal topic outlines require a consistent system of outline
notation. Your teacher will
ask you to use either the traditional (“alphanumeric”) method or
the numerical

(“decimal”) method.
Formal outline notation, together with consistent indentation,
explicitly shows the
relationships between the ideas in your outline. Ideas are
organized by levels. With the
traditional outline method, main (first-level) headings are
indicated by capital Roman
numerals (I, II, III, IV), second-level headings are indented and
indicated by capital
letters (A, B, C, etc.), and third-level headings are indented still
further and are indicated
by numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.). Logically, every subdivided topic
must have at least two
headings: if there is I, there must be II; if there is A, there must
be B, and so on. Outline
notation is not used for introductions or conclusions.
With the numerical method of notation, main headings are
shown by numbers (1, 2, 3,

etc.); second-level headings add a further number after a
decimal point (1.1, 1.2, 1.3,
etc.); and third-level headings have a third number after a
second period (1.1.1, 1.1.2,
1.1.3, etc.). As with the traditional method, indentations help
clarify the relationships
between ideas.
In this English 214 course, you may use either system of outline
notation though we
recommend the traditional method.
Outline Levels
EXAMPLE 1: Traditional topic outline
Thesis
Introduction
I. First-level heading
A. Second-level heading

B. Second-level heading
1. Third-level heading
II. First-level heading
A. Second-level heading
B. Second-level heading
Conclusion
Thesis: Man influences the water cycle in two ways.
Introduction
I. Diversion of runoff

A. Cause: man-made canals and dams
B. Effects
1. Water flow blocked
2. Water removed from cycle
II. Reduction of water held in soil
A. Cause: destruction of vegetation
B. Effects
1. Flooding from increased runoff
2. Insufficient minerals for plants
Conclusion

EXAMPLE 2: Numerical topic outline
Thesis
Introduction
1. First-level heading
1.1 Second-level heading
1.2.1 Third-level heading
2. First-level heading

Conclusion
Thesis: Man influences the water cycle in two ways.
Introduction
1. Diversion of runoff
1.1 Cause: man-made canals and dams
1.2 Effects
1.2.1 Water flow blocked
1.2.2 Water removed from cycle
2. Reduction of water held in soil

2.1 Cause: destruction of vegetation
2.2 Effects
2.2.1 Flooding from increased runoff
2.2.2 Insufficient minerals for plants
Conclusion
After you reach the end of the note-taking stage and just before
you start the first draft of
the report, your teacher will ask to see a clear, coherent three-
level topic outline
showing the range and sequence of information in your report.
At this stage, you also need to rearrange your note cards—if
you have been using this
method—to make them correspond to your revised outline. As
you look through your
note cards, throw away those that you no longer need. At the
same time, look carefully to
see if there are information gaps that might require further
online or Library research.

When you are sure that your outline is complete, that you have
all the information you
need, and you have sequenced your note cards according to the
outline, you will be ready
to start writing the first draft. (See Unit 1d for information on
drafting, revising and
editing.)
THE PROGRESS REPORT
The purpose of a progress report is to inform the reader of the
current status of a
particular project. This type of report is common in both study
and work environments
and may take many forms, for example a short informal
telephone call, a letter or email,

an internal memorandum or a lengthy report. The readers of
such reports are managers,
company clients, work supervisors and course instructors. In all
cases, they are especially
interested in knowing the following:
problems were solved;
ith a
schedule for completing
it.
In English 214, you submit a progress report for your major
report at about the half-way
stage of your research project. It is written as a memorandum
addressed to your teacher
and consists of the following four sections:
I. Introduction
II. Work Completed
III. Problems &

Solution
s
IV. Work to be Completed
At the top of your memorandum page, write the identification
details: the recipient’s
name and title; your name, major, ID number, section number
and serial number; the
subject of the memorandum; and, finally, the provisional title of
the report. If you are
sure that you will not modify this title, you can omit the word
‘provisional.’
I. Introduction

Your introduction should be between 100 and 150 words. Here,
you start with the
specific purpose statement that informs the reader why you are
writing the report. Most
likely, your purpose will be to discuss a problem in which you
focus on the causes,
effects or possible solutions. Your purpose could also be to
present an argument or to
make a detailed comparison. It is a requirement that, like your
provisional title, your
purpose statement (a) shows a narrowed, focused topic and (b)
clearly links your major
with the theme of the semester.
The introduction is also the place to provide your reader with
some background about

your topic such as any necessary definitions or historical and
theoretical description. You
should also explain why your topic is an important one
specifying, for example, who
would most benefit from your research—individuals (eg
personal health strategies),
companies and other organizations (eg the protection of
sensitive commercial data),
countries (eg fighting inflationary pressures) or perhaps even
the world in general for
topics of global significance like pandemics or climate change.
II. Work Completed

The Work Completed section of your progress report informs
the reader what you have
accomplished so far in the major tasks of your project. The
reader wants to know that you
are on schedule to complete the assignment within the
prescribed time limits. Your
progress report provides him with a written record of your
achievements to date. The
research tasks basically involve your sources and your outline.
Explain how many
sources you have found so far and how you found them;
mention the source evaluations
you have written for them, and the notes you have taken.
Supply proof of your claim by writing a working bibliography
of the sources found so

far. At this mid-point stage in the research project, your teacher
will expect to see three or
four sources on your list (though you may not necessarily have
read, taken notes on, or
evaluated all of them).
Provide your reader next with a logical, coherent two-level
topic outline that sets out the
main sections of your report. This outline is still evolving. As
you find and read
additional sources, and gather more information, your outline
will change accordingly.
Your outline must also of course agree exactly with the purpose
statement and topic
description you gave in the introduction and with the
provisional title you gave in the
subject line of the memorandum.

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