4 ESSAYs

Hello, Class,

If well selected, quotations can enhance a research essay because they lend credibility and authority. While quotations can be an effective device for emphasizing a point, overusing them implies that you are not critically thinking on your own.  Overusing quotations also implies that you don’t know your topic well enough to paraphrase and/or summarize what other authors say about your topic.

In addition, quotations can be more difficult to integrate and synthesize into your research because they rely directly on the work of other authors who may have a different thesis. When integrating quotations, you should always use a signal phrase to introduce the quotation. Using signal phrases helps to provide a context for the "other" voices that are in your writing. You can read more about signal phrases in the tagged page in Writer's Help.

Note: For your Synthesis research paper (WA3), you should not use more than a total of 10 quotations.

 

 Assignment:

1. Take a look at the following short tutorial from OWL’s writing lab:   

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/577/01/

 

2. Then, review your draft of WA3 for the use of quotations. Pay special attention to: (1) using more than 10 quotations throughout the body section of your draft; (2) tailoring quotations to fit your writing; and (3) integrating quotations with signal phrases.

3. Finally, write a paragraph in which you describe any errors or improvements that you will address as you begin to revise and finalize your draft of WA3.