APA System of Referencing

American Psychological Association

What is Referencing?

• Also known as citation• The act of providing accurate details about all the

sources of information included in your assignments, reports, theses, etc.

• You avoid plagiarism, which means taking the ideas of others without acknowledging them as the source of ideas

• You must keep a careful record of all the sources you have read and taken notes for your assignments (books, magazines, journals, newspaper, internet materials, reports, conference papers).

Referencing and Quotations

(please refer to the notes in the handouts)

• Direct quotation• Indirect quotation

Purpose of Referencing

• Demonstrate that we have read widely and appropriately• Enables readers to evaluate the quality of our arguments• Lends credibility to our work• Helps us to avoid plagiarism• Provide evidence to support our claims/arguments• Acknowledge the ideas/diagrams/research of others• Increases the worth of our work in the eyes of others• Gives readers the opportunities to access the sources we

have used in our work

• Reference to an entire book Biggs, J.B. (1987). Student Approaches to Learning and Studying. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research.

• Reference to a Newspaper ArticleUnemployment among graduates on the rise. (2006, October 15).

News Straits Times, p.12

• Reference to a Journal ArticleCarter, S.B. (2007). Extensive Reading and Language Learning.

Reading in a Foreign Language, 14 (1). 67-86

• Reference to a Journal Article (electronic version)

Carter, S.B. (2007). Extensive Reading and Language Learning. Reading in a Foreign Language, 14 (1). Retrieved April 2, 2010 from http://nflcr.hawaii.edu.rfl