Writing and Reflection Part I My paraphrasing strategy is to focus on putting the main idea of the author into my own words while still giving credit to the author from whom the idea comes. In other words, I will read what an author has written, summarize it in a new and fresh way, while integrating the idea into my paper appropriately. At the end of the paraphrasing,...
Writing a literature review is a necessary and important step in academic research. You’ll likely write a lit review for your Master’s Thesis and most definitely for your Doctoral Dissertation. It’s something that lets you show your knowledge of the topic. It’s also a way...
Writing and Reflection Part I My paraphrasing strategy is to focus on putting the main idea of the author into my own words while still giving credit to the author from whom the idea comes. In other words, I will read what an author has written, summarize it in a new and fresh way, while integrating the idea into my paper appropriately. At the end of the paraphrasing, I will include an in-text citation that shows the source of the idea.
If one simply quotes an author’s original words all the time, one is not actually doing any writing or work but simply attaching quotes from others together. Even if cited properly this is not very effective writing. A writer should be able to take information he has read, process it, and deliver it in new words that make sense and convey the original author’s idea in a way that fits in with what the writer is trying to say.
My main strength in paraphrasing is distilling the idea rather quickly. I can read an article and identify the author’s main idea immediately. However, one area where I can stand to improve is the area of putting this main idea into my own words. I will be able to spot it but I can have difficulty rephrasing it.
However, as Walden (2018) points out, if one does not rephrase the words, one may commit plagiarism, and I wish to avoid that—so this is one area where I want to show improvement. Part II In the article by Van Note Chism and Weerakoon (2012), three main points from the article were that, 1) students wanted to demonstrate their ability, skill and knowledge in the classroom, but that 2) they lacked fundamental knowledge regarding correct ways to cite sources—which meant their confidence was somewhat misplaced.
The main issue the teachers saw the students were having was that 3) the students were failing to recognize the type of source and therefore were not writing the citation correctly when it came time to do so. Thus, the article indicated that the students needed more practice on familiarizing themselves with the different types of citations (Van Note Chism & Weerakoon, 2012). Each of these points relates to the other in the sense that they all show why the students were struggling with their referencing.
The main points help to illuminate the overall problem—misplaced confidence, lack of knowledge about how to correctly cite; lack of ability to recognize types of sources. Thus, each point describes a feature of the problem. They each help to tell part of the story about how these students approached the problem, what they encountered and why they performed the way they did. These points stand out.
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