Kim Woods

https://awc.ashford.edu/cd-guidelines-for-paraphrasing.html

Guidelines for Paraphrasing Sources

Paraphrasing

We have all watched a good television show or an interesting news story that we wanted to tell others about. When you are explaining the show or story, you most likely tell your friends, your family, or your coworkers what happened, how it happened, and why it happened. In doing so, you describe things like the plot, the main characters, the events, and the important points using your own words. This skill is paraphrasing –using your own words to express someone else's message or ideas.

When you paraphrase in writing, the ideas and meaning of the original source must be maintained; the main ideas need to come through, but the wording has to be your own. And, of course, credit needs to be given to the author. You don’t want to over quote in your paper. A great alternative to quoting is to paraphrase information. However, paraphrasing takes a little more skill than directly quoting information, because, to paraphrase correctly, you need to understand what the original quote or passage is about in order to write about it in your words.

How Do You Paraphrase a Source?

· Read the original two or three times or until you understand it and its meaning.

· Put the original aside and try to write the main ideas in your own words. Say what the source says, but no more, and try to reproduce the source's order of ideas and emphasis.

· Look closely at unfamiliar words, observing carefully the exact sense in which the writer uses the words.

· Check your paraphrase, as often as needed, against the original for accurate tone and meaning, changing any words or phrases that match the original too closely. If the wording of the paraphrase is too close to the wording of the original, then it can be considered plagiarism.

· If you choose to use exact words or phrases from the original source, quote them in your paraphrased version.

· Try to keep your paraphrased version near the same length of the original text. For example, if the paragraph you are paraphrasing is five sentences long, try to make your paraphrased paragraph five sentences as well.

· Include a citation for the source of the information (including the page numbers, if available) so that you can cite the source accurately. Even when you paraphrase, you must still give credit to the original author.

When Is Paraphrasing Useful?

You should paraphrase when…

· you want to express the author's idea but not necessarily the author’s language;

· you want to clarify an author's ideas for the reader and/or for yourself;

· you want an alternative to quoting;

· you want to integrate information from charts, graphs, tables, lectures, etc; or

· you need an authority on the topic or to support your ideas.

Examples of Good Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing can be done with individual sentences or entire paragraphs. Here are some examples:

Original sentence #1:

“Her life spanned years of incredible change for women” (Smith, 2015, p.1).

Paraphrased version:

Mary lived through an era of liberating reform for women (Smith, 2015, p.1).

Original sentence #2:

“Giraffes like Acacia leaves and hay, and they can consume 65 pounds of food a day” (“National Geographic,” 2013, p.16).

Paraphrased version:

A giraffe can eat up to 65 pounds of Acacia leaves and hay every day (“National Geographic,” 2013, p.16).

As you can see in the examples, the essence and meaning of the paraphrased versions are similar to the original sentences. The paraphrased sentences even used the main keywords from the original source, but the order and the structure of the sentence changed when the author put the information in his own words. You can apply these same tactics to paraphrasing longer texts as well. Here is an example of how to paraphrase a paragraph of information:

Original paragraph:

“The feminization of clerical work and teaching by the turn of the century reflected the growth of business and public education. It also reflected limited opportunities elsewhere. Throughout the nineteenth century, stereotyping of work by sex had restricted women's employment. Job options were limited; any field that admitted women attracted a surplus of applicants willing to work for less pay than men would have received. The entry of women into such fields—whether grammar school teaching or office work—drove down wages.”

Woloch, N. (2002). Women and the American experience: A concise history. New York, NY: McGraw–Hill Higher Education.

Paraphrased version:

According to Nancy Woloch (2002) in Women and the American Experience: A Concise History, the “feminization” of jobs in the nineteenth century had two major effects: a lack of employment opportunities for women and inadequate compensation for positions that were available. Thus, while clerical and teaching jobs indicated a boom in these sectors, women were forced to apply for jobs that would pay them less than male workers were paid (p. 170).

This version is properly paraphrased because…

· It introduces the source in a proper signal phrase;

· It is approximately the same length as the original passage;

· It resembles the original passage’s own words and sentence structure;

· It encloses a keyword from the original source within quotation marks; and

· It includes a parenthetical citation in correct APA format.

https://awc.ashford.edu/cd-integrating-quotes.html

Guidelines for Incorporating Quotes

Incorporating Outside Sources

Quoting from outside sources is an important part of academic writing because it puts you into the scholarly conversation and makes your own ideas and your paper more credible. Using quotes is a great way for readers to “hear” the expert voices talking about your writing topic.

When quoting, focus on (a) introducing the quote, (b) explaining its relevance, and (c) citing the sources—both in your writing and in formal citations. This form is known as the ICE method.

The ICE Method

When including outside sources in your writing, follow the ICE method:

· I: Introduce

· C: Cite

· E: Explain

Use this method when inserting direct quotations as well as when you’re paraphrasing or summarizing the ideas of another.

    Introduce the Source

Introduce the source by giving your reader any information that would be useful to know: Who said it? Where did this idea come from? When was it said? Here are some examples of how to introduce a source:

· In her essay, “The Crummy First Draft,” Lekkerkerk (2014) argues that…

· Michandra Claire Jones (2015), celebrated poet and author, wrote that…

· In the textbook, Information Literacy, Mossler (2015) states…

After introducing the quote, be sure that you use a signal verb to indicate that the source’s words are next. In the third example above, you can see that "states" has been used to signal the source’s words. Other signal verbs include:

· acknowledges

· advises

· agrees

· argue

· analyzes

· answers

· asserts

· assumes

· believes

· charges

· claims

· considers

· criticizes

· declares

· describes

· disagrees

· discusses

· explains

· emphasizes

· expresses

· holds

· implies

· interprets

· leaves us with

· lists

· objects

· observes

· offers

· opposes

· points to

· presents

· proposes

· recognizes

· regards

· remarks

· replies

· reports

· reports

· reveals

· says

· states

· suggests

· supports

· tells us

· thinks

· wants to

· wishes

· wonders

    Cite the Source

When citing outside sources, you are required to include: the author(s)' last name(s); the date of publication; and, for direct quotations, the page number on which the quoted passage appears. If there is no page number, use the paragraph number to indicate the location of the quotation.

Precisely how do you insert this required information into your writing? You have two options. The first is to include the full or last name(s) of the author(s) directly in a sentence, and the year of publication in parentheses just following the name(s). If directly quoting, include at the end of your sentence the page number where the quotation can be found. Here are some examples:

· Johansson (2009) says he believes that scholars...

OR

· Norman Johansson (2009) says, “Scholars should pursue PhDs” (p. 167).

Your second option is to include all of the required information in parenthesis at the end of the sentence. Here are some examples:

· Research suggests that graphic warnings on cigarette packages promote smoking cessation (Smith, 2015).

OR

· According to one research study, “In the year following the introduction of graphic warnings…” (Smith, 2015, p. 16).

OR

· Marcus explains that smoking can be deterred by “carefully placed warnings with disturbing imagery included” (Tomlinson, 2008, p. 16).

Notice in the above examples that quotation marks always have a beginning and end, occurring immediately before the first word of the quotation and immediately after the last word. Periods are always placed after the end-of-sentence parentheses, as in (p. 132).

    Explain the Relevance

After introducing and citing the passage, you will need to explain the significance: How might this author’s idea relate to my thesis? How does this data add to what I am trying to prove in this paragraph? Why am I putting this quotation in my paper? What am I trying to show here? Never leave any room for interpretation. It is your responsibility as the writer to interpret the information for your reader and identify its significance. Remember, a quote does not speak for itself or prove anything on its own. That is your job!

Here is an example of an explanation that would be appropriate to accompany the Mack quotation above: Judge Mack viewed juveniles as children first. He envisioned a system that would protect and give treatment to these young offenders so that they could become productive adults, and saw no place for criminal responsibility and punishment within this system.

Now, here is an example of the ICE method at work in a paragraph:

In the beginning stages of the juvenile justice system, it operated in accordance to a paternalistic philosophy. This can be understood through the published words of Judge Julian Mack, who had a hand in the establishment of the juvenile justice system. In 1909, he stated that this system should treat juveniles “as a wise and merciful father handles his own child” (as cited in Scott & Steinberg, 2008, p.16). Judge Mack viewed juveniles as children first. He envisioned a system that would protect and give treatment to these young offenders so that they could become productive adults, and saw no place for criminal responsibility and punishment within this system.

· I: Introduce speaker and why he is an authority on this topic.

· C: Quote material along with citation.

· E: Explain who this quote is coming from as well as his relationship or authority on the topic.

Five Tips for Effective Quoting

While quoting from reliable sources is an important part of writing a research-based paper, some students can become too reliant on quotes to do the work for them, over-running their papers with other peoples’ words. The purpose of quoting is to include an expert’s voice that is unique and different from your own in order to support your ideas.

Here are five key tips for effectively incorporating quotes into your writing:

1. Make Quotes Count. You should quote sparingly, so make sure the quotes you include are impactful and approach the subject in a way that you might not. Part of quoting is “capturing” someone else’s voice and unique expression of an idea. If you could summarize the information and lose none of its meaning, then do that. But if you feel like the expert says it best, then quote the expert.

2. Copy Quotes Correctly. It is important to be accurate when you are quoting – the whole point of quoting is to exactly represent another person’s words. Be careful to copy the quote correctly, and if you need to change anything, do so by indicating that you are changing something. If you need to insert a word, for instance, use brackets, like this: “In this quote [the author] states that people always rise to the occasion.” If you need to delete a word or phrase, use ellipses to represent this deletion, like this: “In this quote…people always rise to the occasion.”

3. Your Words First. Because you are writing the paper, your words should begin and end it – this goes for the paragraphs as well as the whole paper. Avoid beginning paragraphs with a quote – start with your idea and create a topic sentence. Additionally, avoid ending paragraphs with a quote – you may analyze a quote prior to the end of the sentence, and conclude that its meaning informs your point. Use your words first – quotes should be working for you, not the other way around.

4. Keep Quotes Short. Quoting sources should not be a tactic to fill space on the page. Not only should your paper be written in your own words, but the amount of space given to others’ words should be brief. As a general rule of thumb, no more than 15% of your entire paper should be quoted material. Achieve this general goal by using only a few quotes, and keeping those few quotes as brief as 1–2 sentences.

5. “Block” Long Quotes. When your paper necessitates it, you may use a longer quote. In this case, “longer” quotes consist of four or more lines, or approximately 40+ words. When you have a quote of this length, you format it differently in your paper than just incorporating it into the normal sentence structure. Long quotes must be made into “blocks” – a visual indicator that this is a long quote. In order to create this block, indent all the lines twice, but keep the double-spacing.

Here’s an example of creating a block quotation:

Sometimes peoples’ viewpoints can be surprising. According to Robert Coles in his 1989 book, The Call of Stories,

On the way home Daddy became an amateur philosopher; he said God chooses some people to be rich, and that’s how it is, and you have to settle for your luck, and ours isn’t all that good, so that’s too bad, but if you just smile and keep going, then you’ll be fine; it’s when you eat your heart out that you can get in trouble. (41)

NOTE: When you create a block quotation, you do two things differently than if you’re incorporating shorter quotes into your sentence regularly.

· First, you do not encase the quote in quotation marks – the indentation replaces the quotation marks.

· Second, you punctuate the quoted material with a period before the parenthetical citation – with no ending punctuation after the parentheses.

https://ashford.instructure.com/courses/10821/assignments/209657?module_item_id=545245

List of Writing Prompts

For students:

There are three prompts below each with four texts. For your literary analysis essay, choose ONE prompt and text pairing that interests you. Then, take a look at the guiding questions for the text you choose. You don’t necessarily need to answer all of these questions in your paper. The questions are there to help get you thinking in a direction that will be more likely to lead you to a successful literary analysis.

PROMPT 1.

Write an analysis of a key character in a literary work. Focus on two or three key actions of that character. Discuss the character’s motivations and decisions in terms you can support with clear evidence from a critical reading of the text. Consider whether this character’s actions fit together or contradict each other. You may also want to consider whether or not any other characters in the story are aware of this conflict, and if so, how they influence the character you are writing about.

Literary Works (choose one):

“Interpreter of Maladies” (Jhumpa Lahiri, 1999)

Guiding Questions:

1. How does a new outsider community member like Mrs. Das influence Mr. Kapasi, who seems to have become bored with his life and his role in the community?

2. How does Mr. Kapasi’s desire for Mrs. Das make him unable to understand Mrs. Das’ desires, leading to his failure to fulfill his role as the Interpreter of Maladies?

3. How do the Das family’s actions surrounding their children show that their desires or interests do not accord with their obligations?

“What You Pawn, I Will Redeem” (Sherman Alexie, 2003)

Guiding Questions:

1. How does the grandmother’s property at the pawn shop help to define the narrator’s desires and feeling of obligation to recover it? Why is it so important?

2. How does the character accomplish his objective, and how is this surprising considering all of the unfortunate events and bad decisions he makes along the way?

3. How do the other characters--the Aleuts, the pawn shop owner, the waitress, the police officer, the other Indians at the bar--each play an important role in showing how the

narrator is committed to an important mission he is worthy of completing?

“We Came All the Way from Cuba so You Could Dress Like This?” (Achy Obejas, 1994)

Guiding questions:

1. To what conflicts does the title allude (social? Political? Cultural? others?)?

2. The first-person narrator switches tenses (from present to future). How does this create tension in the story?

3. How is the narrator’s internal conflict (“man v. self”) merely an internalization of political, familial, and social conflict?

“The Things They Carried” (Tim O’Brien, 1990) - 5.4 in Journey into Literature

Guiding Questions:

1. The second paragraph of the story begins, “The things they carried were largely determined by necessity” (O’Brien, 1990). Were the soldiers truly able to carry everything they needed? What needs were left unfulfilled by these items, and what in the story suggests this?

2. The narrator also lists specific items that each man carried. How do these items symbolize the emotions that they carried with them, and how does this understanding enrich our understanding of the characters?

3. Often a comparative analysis can help us to notice elements of a story that we might not otherwise notice. Choose two or three characters and compare the things they carried. How does this comparison help qualities of each come to the surface?

PROMPT 2.

In some stories, characters come into conflict with the culture in which they live. Often, a character feels alienated in his/her community or society due to race, gender, class or ethnic background. The texts below all contain a character who is ‘outcast’ or otherwise disconnected from society in some way, reflecting important ideas about both the character and the surrounding society’s assumptions, morality, and values. Choose a text and consider the questions below as you critically read the text. Then, craft a working thesis that suggests how this alienation is expressed in the text and why it is significant.

Literary Works (choose one):

“What You Pawn, I Will Redeem” (Sherman Alexie, 2003)

Guiding Questions:

1. What beliefs and values from Native American culture does the narrator consider important, based on ideas and actions in the story?

2. What kinds of experience and values do characters share across cultural differences like Native Americans and whites, or even between different native groups in the story?

3. How do the bisexual character, the narrator, and the homeless characters in the story all demonstrate and resolve different “outsider” identities?

“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” (Gabriel García Marquez, 1955)

Guiding Questions:

1. How is the supernatural made familiar and the familiar defamiliarized in the story? Is the angel made more human? Are humans made supernatural or less humane?

2. How is the tension between supernatural and human resolved (or not) in the story?

3. What doe the community’s treatment of this ‘outsider’ reveal about its culture, values, and beliefs?

“A Hunger Artist” (Franz Kafka, 1924) – 7.5 in Journey into Literature

Guiding Questions:

1. What is the “hunger artist’s” art, and how does it challenge the understanding of the men who look after the artist as well as the audience that ignores him?

2. Why does the artist have to explain so much about his “art” throughout the story-- is he explaining it for others to understand or as part of his own self-definition?

3. How does the young panther capture the audience’s attention so easily yet they ignore the artist-- what does this say about “appreciating” what others value?

“Everyday Use” (Alice Walker, 1973)

Guiding Questions:

1. How do we know that the protagonist is impoverished? Is she content with her class? Why or why not?

2. How do we know that she is African-American? How does her alienation due to her race also connect with her education?

3. The protagonist’s daughter, Dee, who has embraced her African roots, accuses her mother of not understanding her heritage. Why? What is the situational irony at the end of the story?

PROMPT 3.

Consider the role of setting, or context, in one of the works. For example, a story that takes place in a wild and natural setting might include characters struggling against nature to survive. A story set in a city might include themes of alienation and anonymity because of the impersonal crowds and busy city life. Cultural contexts can combine with both urban and rural elements to produce further meaning, as well. Consider the following questions as you critically read one of the texts below: Does the protagonist conflict with the setting or have particular interactions with it? Does the protagonist’s relationship with the setting connect with his/her development as a character? Does the setting reveal other themes and conflicts?

Literary Works (choose one from any of the lists below):

“The Man of the Crowd” (Edgar Allan Poe, 1845)

Guiding Questions:

1. How does the city setting--busy streets, buildings with specific purposes, dark backstreets-- produce a disorienting and confining experience for people in the story?

2. How do all of the different occupations and “types” of workers in the city combine to communicate that no one is an individual person and no one really knows each other?

3. What sorts of problems do the narrator and some of the other characters have as a result of this alienating city life? (Think of the narrator’s obsession with the man.)

“The Things They Carried” (O’Brien, 1990) - 5.4 in Journey into Literature

Guiding Questions:

1. How does the story communicate the uncertain and frightening setting these soldier-characters experience? (Consider repeated phrases or other devices.)

2. What sorts of emotions, such as stress or fear, does the Vietnam context cause the characters to experience? Give specific examples from the story, and consider how these emotions might be “told” to us in multiple ways.

3. How do the soldiers in the story cope with their setting/context, whether through imagined escapes or other means, and are they successful?

“A Worn Path” (Eudora Welty, 1941) – 5.3 in Journey into Literature

Guiding Questions:

1. Clugston suggests that “[t]he setting in this story is in a particular season -- the Christmas season.” Why is this significant considering the plot?

2. Clugston (2011) further writes: “The physical setting changes during Phoenix Jackson's journey. How does each environment she encounters reflect her character?”

3. Phoenix Jackson encounters many obstacles on her journey. To what non-physical challenges do they allude?

“Sonny’s Blues” (James Baldwin, 1957)

Guiding Questions:

1. How do the characters’ interactions with the multi-faceted “local color” and communities of Harlem articulate the differences between those characters?

2. What does the story suggest about a neighborhood’s cultural identity and the diverse life experiences possible, even when people seem to come from the same place?

3. What aspects of the setting (the neighborhood, the school, etc.) could be characterized as liberating or oppressive, and how is this reflected in the characters?

List of Literary Techniques Technique	Description
Allusion	A reference to a recognized literary work, person, historic event, artistic achievement, etc. that enhances the meaning of a detail in a literary work.
Climax	The crisis or high point of tension that becomes the story’s turning point—the point at which the outcome of the conflict is determined.
Conflict	The struggle that shapes the plot in a story.
Dramatic irony	When the reader or audience knows more about the action than the character involved.
Epiphany	A profound and sudden personal discovery.
Exposition	Setting and essential background information presented at the beginning of a story or play.
Falling action	A reduction in intensity following the climax in a story or play, allowing the various complications to be worked out.
Fate	An outside source that determines human events.
Figurative language	Language used in a non-literal way to convey images and ideas.
Figures of speech	The main tools of figurative language; include similes and metaphors..
First-person point of view	Occurs when the narrator is a character in the story and tells the story from his or her perspective.
Flashback	The description of an event that occurred prior to the action in the story.
Foreshadowing	A technique a writer uses to hint or suggest what the outcome of an important conflict or situation in a narrative