Part III: Working with Sources - Introduction to College Writing Series

presented by Cal Tech hi I'm Anna and I'm Katie and we're here to talk to you about working with the ideas of others in productive ways if you had asked me about this topic right after I graduated from high school I would have thought of course I know how to do that okay this is my high school brain when I write an English paper I write about a book or something so I have to take pieces of that book and put them in my essay but as youve probably guessed writing about other people's ideas isn't

quite that simple instead we might think about it like this literary theorist Kenneth Burke came up with the idea that the collection of work in a field is like a conversation without getting into his whole analogy let's just say that your piece of writing is your contribution to the conversation and as in any conversation it's good to acknowledge and respond to other participants according to Joseph Harris a professor and director of composition at the University of Delaware the ways of doing so fall into four main categories illustrating authorizing borrowing and extending other writers ideas let's

take a closer look at each of these illustrating is the form you're probably most familiar with an example of this is when you include a quotation from a book to illustrate a particular literary pattern authorizing may also be familiar to you this is when you use evidence from an expert whose work agrees with the point you're trying to make in your writing scientific papers often authorize underlying assumptions by using the results of previous studies the next two are probably less familiar to you but you'll see that they're also pretty easy to understand borrowing is when

you use another person's framework for thinking about something for instance in this talk we are borrowing Harris's way of thinking it may seem as though adopting another person's framework is easy but it can actually be challenging because you need to use that Concept in an original application for example Harris probably didn't imagine that his idea would be used in a presentation to prepare freshman for college writing a final way in which we use another person's ideas is extending which is when you take an existing Concept in the field and alter or add to it for

example if we wanted to argue that there are not four but five ways of using other people's ideas in your writing we would be extending Joseph Harris's idea so what's the point of doing all of this well it's to make your argument there are usually many ways to interpret another person's work by discussing a piece you can help guide your reader to understand how you view the other person's idea within reason of course you shouldn't twist another person's words around but if you've done a good job of incorporating other people's ideas they should help explain

and support your idea in a way that convinces your audience that your point is valid and worthwhile now let's talk about the Practical details of how you actually incorporate these ideas into your own writing the three main methods are quotation paraphrase and summary quotation is simply taking the words directly from another author and putting them into your own writing using quotation marks usually you use this if something about the author's exact Pros is important to your work for example you might quote a line from a poem in which word choice or rhythm is important in

contrast paraphrase does not preserve the author's wording but it does retain the underlying logic or structure in presenting the ideas an example of where paraphrase might be used is in describing a short scene in the analysis of a film finally summary is a way of presenting only the relevant main ideas of a person's work without going through these same words or exact point-by-point logic this is common in science for instance a biology paper might summarize the findings of a previous study to describe the background for their research regardless of which method you use to present

other thinkers ideas it should be accompanied by a discussion of how that idea is relevant to your own purpose your discussion should answer the question why does this idea matter in the context of your argument now that you know how to incorporate another person's idea into your own work we're going to point out a few mistakes freshman often make so hopefully you can avoid them a good saying to follow is don't float your quote to float your quote is to plop a quote into a paragraph Without properly incorporating it into a sentence sentences like this

read awkwardly such as in the following example token stories emphasize the Grandeur of Adventure and exploration not all those who wander are lost quote should be seamlessly incorporated into a sentence such that the sentence reads as if there is no quote at all here's an example with the same quote token stories emphasize the Grandeur of Adventure and exploration showing that not all those who wander are lost often times a quote does not agree with your sentence in tense or number if that is the case you can replace any disagreeing text with your own words in

square brackets to indicate the change another another common mistake that you see is using evidence to explain evidence this is not a sufficient form of discussion keep in mind that your writing is supposed to be about your own ideas you should only use others ideas to support your own therefore any evidence should always be accompanied by discussion in the form of your own thoughts State something that is not explicitly stated in the evidence and make clear why you chose this piece of evidence also avoid the giant block quote of death you might encounter a large

chunk of text that contains useful information through out and it's tempting to quote the entire block as filler what you should do instead is decide if the exact wording of the evidence is essential to the point that you want to make if it is then pick and choose quotes that best capture your intended purpose and use ellipses or dot dot dot to indicate omitted text if the exact wording is not so important you're better off paraphrasing or summarizing here's an example in which you are trying to use a block quote as evidence the block quote

does contain useful information we have to read through and pick out the phrases that are actually necessary here is an example in which we have properly embedded the evidence although the total amount of text is the same We have replaced the block quote with a smaller concise quote however the true purpose of the one ring was for the dark lord to bring the remaining ring bearers and in the darkness bind them a summary sentence the One Ring used deceit and its potent powers of persuasion to give the dark lord control over the leaders of Middle

Earth and a discussion sentence the one ring is an example of how the promise of power can corrupt even the most prominent and influential members of a society notice that our discussion sentence contains commentary that has a broader impact than just restating the evidence last you should always build on any piece of evidence that you use not just break it down into smaller parts and restate it in different words while it is good to break down a piece of evidence and explain it your discussion should go beyond surface level analysis your evidence should support an

overarching Point explain how it supports your point using your own thoughts that go beyond what your evidence States when using a piece of evidence always ask yourself why is it matter to my point let's quickly recap what we've discussed we saw that there are a variety of ways in which other thinkers ideas can help you build your argument the ways of discussing those ideas include quotation paraphrase and summary when you incorporate another person's work into your writing try to avoid these common pitfalls incorporate your quotes smoothly into a sentence and make sure you provide your

own discussion for each piece of evidence and show its purpose in supporting your own ideas and finally remember that this is your work use the field to build up your argument if you have any questions about this presentation email us at ring cal.edu thanks for watching and good luck in your writing