PREWRITING, PLAGIARISM, ANDPARAPHRASING,

CM 220 Unit 5 Seminar

PREWRITING TECHNIQUES

First, a review. . .

Unit 5 discussion: Prewriting for the Draft

Read the Writing Center document on Prewriting.

Choose two techniques that you think will work best for you and explain why.

Use those techniques to generate at least 4 ideas for your draft.

If you have any references to sources in your post, be sure to use appropriate APA citations!

Mention any questions you have about your draft or the prewriting/drafting process.

Respond to at least two classmates’ original posts (150-200 words each)

Prewriting Techniques

FreewritingBrainstormingBubblingClusteringListingInformal outliningAnnotatingQuestioningNote: see p. 32-39 of the handbook for more on prewriting.

Bubbling

Listing (sample topic: Banning cigarettes)

Main points

Support from sources?

Audience concerns to address

Examples I could use

Cigarettes are bad for everyone’s health, smokers and non-smokers alike

Surgeon General (warnings), medical reports on second-hand and third-hand smoke effects

Should the government outlaw everything that is bad for us (fast food, etc.?)

Childhood asthma and allergies, even ear infections, often tied into parents’ smoking

Those horrible pictures they showed in elem. School of black lungs of smokers!

Outlining

We use an outline because it provides the structure we need to create an organized essay.

Although our writing can use creativity, the essay that the outline will help you write is not creative writing. It is persuasive writing based on your own ideas. However, you must use facts, examples, and quotes from experts to support any claims that you make!

The outline can help you decide what to include and where it would be most effective to place particular points.

Another purpose of the outline is to determine how outside sources will fit into your paragraphs.

You can use the formal (Roman Numeral) outline structure or a less formal version of the outline.

Informal 0utline example

I. Introduction: The United States should ban smoking.

A. Danger to health of smoker

B. Danger to health of non-smoker

C. Contributions to rising health costs in U.S.

II. Smoking is dangerous to the health of smokers.

A. Lung cancer risks

B. Asthma and other breathing disorders

C. Heart problems

Annotation

Used when reading potential sources Be a critical reader—ask questions and take notes as you read!

You could also keep an “annotated bibliography” of each source as you read it. Create an APA-style citation, then write a brief paragraph that summarizes the main points and notes whether the source will be useful in your paper.

PLAGIARISM

On to our next topic. . .

What is plagiarism?

Derived from the Latin word plagiarius (“kidnapper”), plagiarism refers to a form of cheating that has been defined as “the false assumption of authorship; the wrongful act of taking the product of another person’s mind, and presenting it as one’s own” (Alexander Lindey, Plagiarism and Originality, 1952).

Taken from the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th ed. (2003, p. 66)

How do I avoid plagiarism?

Provide quotation marks, in-text citations (name, year, page number or paragraph #), and reference page citations for direct quotes.

Provide in-text citations (name, year) and reference page citations for paraphrases and summaries.

Use signal phrases to introduce quotes and paraphrases.

Use your own writing style for paraphrases and summaries—do not use the style, order of ideas, or specific language of the source material!

Cite anything that is not common knowledge.Make sure that you have in-text citations for all sources listed on your reference page and vice-versa!

Why do I want to use sources?

Sources can1. support our own reasoning and logic with

expert opinion2. add credibility to an idea3. provide additional informationSources cannot1. be the entire essay2. string together to create entire paragraphsAbove all, do not use a series of paraphrases

and quotations as your whole paragraph. Paragraphs are not compilations of sources; we are writing original work, not repeating our sources’ ideas only.

CITING, PARAPHRASING AND QUOTING

And our final topic. . .

Common knowledge

How do I decide what I need to cite in my paper?

Is this information that most people would know?

Is this information that would be known by those outside of a particular field?

Is the information readily available in general reference sources like encyclopedias?

If the answer to all three is “Yes,” then you don’t need a citation.

For more details, go to http://library.csusm.edu/plagiarism/howtoavoid/how_avoid_common.htm

What is common knowledge?

Which of the following would NOT need a citation?

There are 5,283 hospice programs in the United States.

The critic Stephen Greenblatt argues that the religious conflicts of his period, especially those that occurred during his youth, had an effect on Shakespeare's work.

The freezing point of water is 32 degrees Fahrenheit or 0 degrees Centigrade.

The teen pregnancy rate declined by two percent between 1999 and 2000.

Borrowed information

“Borrowed information” must always be cited, whether it is paraphrased in your own words or directly quoted.

Always provide citations for numbers!

This includes dates, numbers, percentages, dollar values, statistics. Citation is at the end of the sentence.

In 2001, there were 50 million cases of the flu (Green, 2004).

Quotes – word for word –end of sentence or within the text “All papers must be in APA manuscript style” (Levine, 2004, p. 12).

Levine (2004) stated, “All papers must be in APA manuscript style” (p. 12).

Paraphrases.- end of paragraph if only one source is cited. Mrs. Horninger says we must follow standard APA manuscript style to accurately give credit to author’s whose writing we borrow (2004).

In-text (parenthetical) citations

Require three pieces of information:Author’s last nameYearPage number (for direct quotes)

(Thompson, 2007, p. 345)(Thompson, 2007)According to Thompson (2007), “50 percent of the population have computers” (p. 345).

Remember, if you don’t have an author’s name, use the title, and if you don’t have a date, use “n.d.” If you are quoting a web site with no pages, use a paragraph#.

According to “The Growth of Cyberspace,” “50 percent of the population have computers” (n.d., ¶ 5).

Question: What are paraphrasing and quoting and how do they compare and contrast?

Paraphrasing is putting a source’s ideas in your own words and sentence structure. The idea still belongs to someone else, but you have expressed it in your own writing voice. This is useful because the style remains more constant throughout the essay with paraphrasing than frequent quoting.

Quoting is using the exact words, enclosed in quotation marks, of the source.

Paraphrasing uses your own words, quoting uses the source’s words, but both provide source support and require APA citation to give credit to sources.

How can I avoid plagiarism when I paraphrase?

Ask questions as you read: Be a critical reader!When you take notes, DO NOT use the language of the source—write notes in your own words and list sources!

Ask yourself what you need to include and exclude in your paraphrase.

Write the main idea of the passage in your own words without looking at the quote.

The paraphrase should use your own style and language. Do not merely substitute a few synonyms. The order of ideas should also be different, especially if the source contains lists.

Include the author’s name in a signal phrase.

When to quote

Language is distinctiveTough to paraphrase in your own wordsImportant as authoritative support for your argument

Reader needs to see the original because the quote itself is open to interpretation

Be sure not to over-quote! The primary voice in the paper should be your own

How to quote

Be accurate!-check and recheck spelling, grammar, and word placement.

-don’t let your spellchecker change a peculiar spelling in the quote (i.e. British spellings of colour, flavour, etc.)

Don’t EVER use quotes as a thesis statement or a topic sentence

Do use quotes as evidence to support an argument you have constructed

Integrate your chosen quotes into YOUR writing (signal phrases—don’t leave quotes “hanging”).

Cite religiously!

Quote examples

Martha Saxton’s assertion that Louisa May Alcott Alcott wrote Little Women without “rewriting or rethinking a word” contributes to the continued aesthetic devaluation of the novel and its creator (2004, p. 295).

Susan Warner’s The Wide, Wide World ironizes the situation of women in the nineteenth century, for as Jane Tompkins reminds us, “sentimental heroines rarely get beyond the confines of a private space,” much less traverse the “wide world” (1987, p. 150).

OriginalOriginal PlagiarizedPlagiarized

Polls confirm that these World War II-era children have aged into the most war-and casualty-averse Americans, the most ardent supporters of the UN, and the biggest advocates of committee-scripted process.

This passage comes from Howe & Strauss, 2002, p.

31.

Statistics demonstrate that these World War II-era children have matured into the most battle and victim-averse American citizens, the most enthusiastic defenders of the United Nations, and the largest supporters of bureaucratic process (Howe & Strauss, 2002).

Paraphrase example

Appropriate paraphrase

Why is this paraphrase better than the one on the previous slide?

What differences do you notice between the two?

The generation now in the their 60s and 70s remember World War II from their childhoods; therefore, they are violently against war and the casualties it inflicts. They believe in the power of the United Nations and other bureaucracies to solve world conflict (Howe & Strauss, 2002).

Let’s practice paraphrasing and quoting!

As the newest incarnation of the ESEA**, the No Child Left Behind Act has expanded the federal role in education and become a focal point of education policy. Coming at a time of wide public concern about the state of education, the legislation sets in place requirements that reach into virtually every public school in America. It takes particular aim at improving the educational lot of disadvantaged students.

Published: September 21, 2004 “No Child Left Behind” on Edweek.org Paragraph 2 **ESEA: Elementary and Secondary Education Act

Another practice opportunity. . .

Home-schooling regulations are only justified, Kunzman says, when (1) vital interests of children or society are at stake, (2) there is a general consensus on standards for meeting those interests, and (3) there is an effective way to measure whether those standards are met. Kunzman offers only one possible regulation that meets all three criteria: he thinks home-schoolers, like regular school children, should be tested for basic skills in reading, writing and math.

From “Three Smart Rules for Home School Regulation” by Jay Mathews, published on-line (WashingtonPost.com), on August 21, 2009

Paragraph 6 Robert Kunzman, who is cited here, is the author of a new book on

homeschooling, Write These Laws On Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling. A former high school teacher, and administrator, he is now an associate professor at the Indiana University School of Education.

Further resources on paraphrasing

The following are web sites which will give you more details on plagiarism and paraphrasing:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/619/01/ http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/563/01/ http://owl.english.purdue.edu/workshops/hypertext/apa/sources/intext.html

http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/researchsources/includingsources/paraphrasing/index.cfm

http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/QPA_paraphrase2.html

http://library.duke.edu/research/plagiarism/cite/paraphrase.html

http://www.utoronto.ca/ucwriting/paraphrase.html

Further resources on APA

The following are web sites which will give you a mini handbook for APA documentation style.

www.owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/print/research/r_apa.html

www.rpi.edu/dept/llc/writecenter/web/apa.html

www.wooster.edu/psychology/apa-cirb.html

www.wcu.edu/WritingCenter/isource.asp?page=apa_format.html

www.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/workshop/citapa.htm

www.english.uiuc.edu/cws/wworkshop/bibliography_style_handbookapa.htm

http://linguistics.byu.edu/faculty/henrichsenl/apa/apa01.html