Agenda: Seminar 2CM 109 COMP I

Effective Writing I for Health Care Professionals

Agenda

Today we will talk about how to research a project for a college class.

Depending on how good your high school education was, you may have heard all of this before.

But it bears repeating. The information for today comes from our

Unit 3 readings.

Read Articles

Personal interviews, surveys, and general knowledge you have gained through experience may be interesting and relevant, but in CM 109 we will focus mainly on using published material from articles on the Internet and in the KU Online Library.

Show that your ideas are mainstream by cross-referencing them to articles by experts in the field of study of your paper.

Readers are interested in your opinions and experience, but in academic papers, they expect to find the emphasis on what you discovered the experts say.

For the Final Project, you will be required to integrate at least 3 sources into the paper, and all research must come from the Kaplan Library or from published print sources.

MOTTO:

An overwhelming amount of research information is available, especially with the mammoth Internet database, but not all information is created equally.

Kaplan students are obligated to figure out which is high-quality, and which is mediocre.

Reliable Sources

Because information in the KU Online Library has been through the editorial review process, it is considered credible and worthy of academic use.

However, other sources, such as some websites, personal opinions that are not from experts, and tabloid publications are not considered credible research for academic purposes.

And Library articles may contain bias and rhetorical devices that lower their reliability score.

Reliable Sources

When evaluating sources, look at the following 5 things: 1. Author 2. Date of publication 3. Source of publication 4. Type of publication 5. Suffix on the URL (only if it is a Web source). The following is

a list of common suffixes and what they represent: • Commercial sites: .com • Military sites: .mil • Government sites: .gov • Network sites: .net • Educational sites: .edu • Non-profit organization sites: .org

Never Use These

Some types of sources should never be included in academic research.

1) encyclopedias 2) dictionaries 3) personal documents 4) member-directed websites (like blogs) 5) Wikipedia 6) religious books such as The Bible.

College-Level Research

Our KU Writing Center includes resources for learning about how to conduct college-level research.

One resource, “Conducting Research” provides a detailed plan for organizing your research.

Also, review the “Top Ten Mistakes in Academic Research.”

Both documents are also found in Chapter 11 of The KU Handbook for Writers and will support your research process and help you avoid common errors that will derail your work.

Why Use APA?

APA is a system of giving credit to an author for his or her original words, ideas, photographs, graphs and charts, line drawings, etc.

There are 2 types of APA citation: in-text and end note.

In-text citation is so named because it actually appears in the body of the essay.

These citations show when and where you are borrowing another person’s exact words or ideas.

To avoid plagiarism, citations must be included every time you use material from your sources.

Whether you paraphrase, summarize, or quote, you must cite.

Help with APA Style

The APA Quick Reference link, found in the Course Home left-side navigation bar of our course room.

The Writing Center reference material and workshop on APA formatting.

Chapter 11 of The KU Handbook for Writers. Be sure to locate these resources before you

start your project for this Unit.

Paraphrasing

A paraphrase is a rewording the original passage in your own words keeping the author’s ideas.

To paraphrase accurately, use your own words and sentence structure to restate what the author says.

Use a thesaurus to come up with different words that mean the same thing.

Paraphrased information is used most often (80% of your text).

Separate your interpretations from the ideas of the original author, so your reader is clear about when you are paraphrasing.

Paraphrasing

Keep these paraphrasing rules in mind: 1. Use synonyms to replace key words. 2. Restructure the sentence. You may even create two or more

separate sentences. 3. Explain technical terms in more common language. If you like some phrases, you can direct quote them in your

paraphrase. If the author uses a word in a special way, put that word in quote

marks. 4. Include in-text citation: for a paraphrase it is always: (author,

year of publication). A page number is not required because the information is being rephrased.

Quoting

A quote is copying the original text exactly (right down to the punctuation marks and mistakes if any) using the author’s ideas and words.

Be sure to introduce or conclude the quote with your own writing to avoid a “drop-and-run quote.”

Never let long quotes do the talking for you; they back you up; you must explain them to your reader (show how they support your thesis).

Direct Quotes

4 times when a direct quote is called for:

1. The speaker is impressive (famous, well-qualified) and his or her reputation lends impact to the quote.

2. The source is impressive (such as the US Government).

3. The words are elegant and catchy, and simply cannot be re-written without wrecking the beauty of the original wording.

4. You want to emphasize that THIS is what was written or said.

Otherwise—always paraphrase or summarize.

Parenthetical Citations

In-text citations include: 1) the authors’ last names and 2) the year of publication.

For an article published in 2007 by John Smith and Jane Thompson: (Smith & Thompson, 2007).

Material taken word-for-word from a source should include a page number in the in-text citation if it is available.

For example: (Smith & Thompson, 2007, p. 32). Some sources such as web-site articles do not include page

numbers, so they would not have page numbers in the citations, even if they are quoted.

If there is no author, the title is then included, such as (“Researching Autism,” 2009).

References List

In addition to in-text citations, the other time you acknowledge sources is at the end of your paper.

The first step to writing an end note citation is to determine the type of source you are working with.

Sources for academic research range from published books, to journal and newspaper articles, to websites, to personal interviews.

Each requires different information for the citation. To be correct, copy the model precisely, right down to

the punctuation marks.

Plagiarism

The most common forms of plagiarism in a composition class include 1) turning in material that was written by the student for another course without proper revision and / or without discussing it with the instructor; 2) that is followed by accidentally not properly citing material that is taken from a source.

Plagiarism

Chapter 13 of The KU Handbook for Writers discusses plagiarism in depth, as well as ways to avoid it.

Hundreds of colleges and universities have posted free tutorials on avoiding plagiarism.

The issue often comes about unintentionally as students cite things incorrectly or forget to include citations for some material.

Working while tired or rushed causes problems. However, plagiarism is a serious mistake both in

school and in courts of law, regardless of intent.

Plagiarism

There are key ways to prevent plagiarism. First, know what plagiarism is; see a tip sheet

called “Types of Plagiarism, posted in Doc Sharing.

Second, know what information needs to be cited and cite it correctly.

For example, what is common knowledge? When in doubt—cite, cite, cite!