{"id":28,"date":"2016-09-21T13:39:19","date_gmt":"2016-09-21T13:39:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/writingincollege\/?post_type=chapter&p=28"},"modified":"2016-09-21T13:46:03","modified_gmt":"2016-09-21T13:46:03","slug":"listening-to-sources-talking-to-sources","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-fmcc-writing-in-college\/chapter\/listening-to-sources-talking-to-sources\/","title":{"raw":"Listening to Sources, Talking to Sources","rendered":"Listening to Sources, Talking to Sources"},"content":{"raw":"
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Theses and sources<\/h1>\r\nEveryone knows that a thorough analysis and persuasive argument needs strong evidence. The credibility of sources, addressed in Chapter 4<\/a>, is one key element of strong evidence, but it also matters how sources are used in the text of the paper. Many students are accustomed to thinking of sources simply as expert corroboration for their own points. As a result, they tend to comb texts to find statements that closely parallel what they want to say and then incorporate quotes as evidence that a published author agrees with them. That\u2019s one way to use sources, but there is a lot more to it.\r\n\r\nRecall from prior chapters that writing academic papers is about joining a conversation. You\u2019re contributing your own original thinking to some complex problem, be it interpretive, theoretical, or practical. Citing sources helps situate your ideas within that ongoing conversation. Sometimes you\u2019re citing a research finding that provides strong evidence for your point; at other times you\u2019re summarizing someone else\u2019s ideas in order to explain how your own opinion differs or to note how someone else\u2019s concept applies to a new situation. Graff and Birkenstein<\/a>1<\/a><\/sup> encourage you to think about writing with sources is a \u201cThey Say\/I Say\u201d process. You first report what \u201cthey\u201d say; \u201cthey\u201d being published authors, prevalent ideas in society at large, or maybe participants in some kind of political or social debate. Then you respond by explaining what you think: Do you agree? Disagree? A little of both?\r\n\r\nThis \u201cThey Say\/I Say\u201d approach can help student writers find balance in their use of sources. On one extreme, some students think that they aren\u2019t allowed to make any claims without citing one or more expert authors saying the same thing. When their instructors encourage them to bring more original thinking into their writing, they\u2019re confused about how to do it. On the other extreme, some students tend to describe, more or less accurately, what sources say about a topic but then go on to state opinions that seem unrelated to the claims they just summarized. For example, a student writer may draw on expert sources to explain how the prevention and early detection of cancer has saved lives2<\/a><\/sup> but then argue for more funding for curing advanced cancer without making any explicit link to the points about prevention and screening. On one extreme, the sources are allowed to crowd out original thinking; on the other, they have seemingly no impact on the author\u2019s conclusions.\r\n\r\nHow can you know when you\u2019re avoiding both of these extremes? In other words, what kinds of theses<\/a> (\u201cI Say\u201d) can count as an original claim and still be grounded in the sources (\u201cThey Say\u201d)? Here are five common strategies:\r\n
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  1. Combine research findings from multiple sources to make a larger summary argument<\/em>. You might find that none of the sources you\u2019re working with specifically claim that early 20th century British literature was preoccupied with changing gender roles but that, together, their findings all point to that broader conclusion.<\/li>\r\n \t
  2. Combine research findings from multiple sources to make a claim about their implications<\/em>. You might review papers that explore various factors shaping voting behavior to argue that a particular voting-reform proposal will likely have positive impacts.<\/li>\r\n \t
  3. Identify underlying areas of agreement<\/em>. You may argue that the literature on cancer and the literature on violence both describe the unrecognized importance of prevention and early intervention in order to claim that insights about one set of problems may be useful for the other.<\/li>\r\n \t
  4. Identify underlying areas of disagreement<\/em>. You may find that the controversies surrounding educational reform\u2014and its debates about accountability, curricula, school funding\u2014ultimately stem from different assumptions about the role of schools in society.<\/li>\r\n \t
  5. Identify unanswered questions<\/em>. Perhaps you review studies of the genetic and behavioral contributors to diabetes in order to highlight unknown factors and argue for more in-depth research on the role of the environment.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\nThere are certainly other ways authors use sources to build theses, but these examples illustrate how original thinking in academic writing involves making connections with and between a strategically chosen set of sources.\r\n

    Incorporating sources<\/h1>\r\nHere\u2019s a passage of academic writing (an excerpt, not a complete paper) that illustrates several ways that sources can figure into a \u201cThey Say\/I Say\u201d approach3<\/a><\/sup>:\r\n
    Willingham (2011<\/a>) draws on cognitive science to explain that students must be able to regulate their emotions in order to learn. Emotional self-regulation enables students to ignore distractions and channel their attention and behaviors in appropriate ways. Other research findings confirm that anxiety interferes with learning and academic performance because it makes distractions harder to resist (Perkins and Graham-Bermann, 2012<\/a>;\u00a0Putwain and Best, 2011<\/a>).\u00a0Other cognitive scientists point out that deep learning is itself stressful because it requires people to think hard about complex, unfamiliar material instead of relying on cognitive short-cuts.\u00a0Kahneman (2011)<\/a>\u00a0describes this difference in terms of two systems for thinking: one fast and one slow. Fast thinking is based on assumptions and habits and doesn\u2019t require a lot of effort. For example, driving a familiar route or a routine grocery-shopping trip are not usually intellectually taxing activities. Slow thinking, on the other hand, is what we do when we encounter novel problems and situations. It\u2019s effortful, and it usually feels tedious and confusing. It is emotionally challenging as well because we are, by definition, incompetent while we\u2019re doing it, which provokes some anxiety. Solving a tough problem is rewarding, but the path itself is often unpleasant.\r\n\r\nThese insights from cognitive science enable us to critically assess the claims made on both sides of the education reform debate. On one hand, they cast doubt on the claims of education reformers that measuring teachers\u2019 performance by student test scores is the best way to improve education. For example, the\u00a0Center for Education Reform<\/a>\u00a0promotes \u201cthe implementation of strong, data-driven, performance-based accountability systems that ensure teachers are rewarded, retained and advanced based on how they perform in adding value to the students who they teach, measured predominantly by student achievement\u201d (http:\/\/www.edreform.com\/issues\/teacher-quality\/#what-we-believe<\/a>). The research that Willingham (2011) and Kahneman (2011) describe suggests that frequent high-stakes testing may actually work against learning by introducing greater anxiety into the school environment.\r\nAt the same time, opponents of education reform should acknowledge that these research findings should prompt us to take a fresh look at how we educate our children. While Stan Karp of\u00a0Rethinking Schools<\/a>\u00a0is correct when he argues that \u201cdata-driven formulas [based on standardized testing] lack both statistical credibility and a basic understanding of the human motivations and relationships that make good schooling possible\u201d (http:\/\/www.rethinkingschools.org\/archive\/26_03\/26_03_karp.shtm<\/a>), it doesn\u2019t necessarily follow that all education reform proposals lack merit. Challenging standards, together with specific training in emotional self-regulation, will likely enable more students to succeed.4<\/a><\/sup><\/blockquote>\r\nIn that example, the ideas of Willingham and Kahneman are summarized approvingly, bolstered with additional research findings, and then applied to a new realm: the current debate surrounding education reform. Voices in that debate were portrayed as accurately as possible, sometimes with representative quotes. Most importantly, all references were tied directly to the author\u2019s own interpretative point, which relies on the quoted claims.\r\n
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    I think the most important lesson for me to learn about sources was that the best way to use them is to create a new point. What I mean by this is instead of using them only to back up your points, create your own conclusion from what your sources say. As a psychology major, I look at a lot of data from researchers who have created a conclusion from a meta-analysis (a combination of many studies about the same thing). So that\u2019s how I like to think of using sources, I will look at many articles about the same subject and then come up with my own opinion. After using your sources, it is very important to cite them correctly<\/span>. Personally, I want to be a respected and trustworthy scholar. However, if any of my papers were to be found without proper citations, all of my hard work would be for nothing and people would be wary about the rest of my work.<\/p>\r\n

    Aly Button<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\nAs you can see, there are times when you should quote or paraphrase sources that you don\u2019t agree with or do not find particularly compelling. They may convey ideas and opinions that help explain and justify your own argument. Similarly, when you cite sources that you agree with, you should choose quotes or paraphrases that serve as building blocks within your own argument. Regardless of the role each source plays in your writing, you certainly don\u2019t need to find whole sentences or passages that express your thinking. Rather, focus on what each of those sources is claiming, why, and how exactly their claims relate to your own points.\r\n\r\nThe remainder of this chapter explains some key principles for incorporating sources, principles which follow from the general point that academic writing is about entering an ongoing conversation.\r\n

    Principle 1: Listen to your sources<\/h2>\r\nHave you ever had the maddening experience of arguing with someone who twisted your words to make it seem like you were saying something you weren\u2019t? Novice writers sometimes inadvertently misrepresent their sources when they quote very minor points from an article or even positions that the authors of an article disagree with. It often happens when students approach their sources with the goal of finding snippets that align with their own opinion. For example, the passage above contains the phrase \u201cmeasuring teachers\u2019 performance by student test scores is the best way to improve education.\u201d An inexperienced writer might include that quote in a paper without making it clear that the author(s) of the source actually dispute that very claim. Doing so is not intentionally fraudulent, but it reveals that the paper-writer isn\u2019t really thinking about and responding to claims and arguments made by others. In that way, it harms his or her credibility.\r\n\r\nAcademic journal articles are especially likely to be misrepresented by student writers because their literature review sections often summarize a number of contrasting viewpoints. For example, sociologists Jennifer C. Lee and Jeremy Staff wrote a paper in which they note that high-schoolers who spend more hours at a job are more likely to drop out of school.5<\/a><\/sup> However, Lee and Staff\u2019s analysis finds that working more hours doesn\u2019t actually make a student more likely to drop out. Instead, the students who express less interest in school are both more likely to work a lot of hours and<\/em> more likely to drop out. In short, Lee and Staff argue that disaffection with school causes students to drop-out, not working at a job. In reviewing prior research about the impact of work on dropping out, Lee and Staff write \u201cPaid work, especially when it is considered intensive, reduces grade point averages, time spent on homework, educational aspirations, and the likelihood of completing high school\u201d6<\/a><\/sup>. If you included that quote without explaining how it fits into Lee and Staff\u2019s actual argument, you would be misrepresenting that source.\r\n

    Principle 2: Provide context<\/h2>\r\nAnother error beginners often make is to drop in a quote without any context. If you simply quote, \u201cStudents begin preschool with a set of self-regulation skills that are a product of their genetic inheritance and their family environment\u201d (Willingham, 2011, p.24), your reader is left wondering who Willingham is, why he or she is included here, and where this statement fits into his or her larger work. The whole point of incorporating sources is to situate your own insights in the conversation. As part of that, you should provide some kind of context the first time you use that source. Some examples:\r\n
    \r\n
    Willingham, a cognitive scientist, claims that \u2026<\/div><\/blockquote>\r\n
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    Research in cognitive science has found that \u2026 (Willingham, 2011).<\/div><\/blockquote>\r\n
    \r\n
    Willingham argues that \u201cStudents begin preschool with a set of self-regulation skills that are a product of their genetic inheritance and their family environment\u201d (Willingham, 2011, p.24). Drawing on findings in cognitive science, he explains \u201c\u2026\u201d<\/div><\/blockquote>\r\nAs the second example above shows, providing a context doesn\u2019t mean writing a brief biography of every author in your bibliography\u2014it just means including some signal about why that source is included in your text.\r\n\r\nEven more baffling to your reader is when quoted material does not fit into the flow of the text. For example, a novice student might write,\r\n
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    Schools and parents shouldn\u2019t set limits on how much teenagers are allowed to work at jobs. \u201cWe conclude that intensive work does not affect the likelihood of high school dropout among youths who have a high propensity to spend long hours on the job\u201d (Lee and Staff, 2007, p. 171). Teens should be trusted to learn how to manage their time.<\/div><\/blockquote>\r\nThe reader is thinking, who is this sudden, ghostly \u201cwe\u201d? Why should this source be believed? If you find that passages with quotes in your draft are awkward to read out loud, that\u2019s a sign that you need to contextualize the quote more effectively. Here\u2019s a version that puts the quote in context:\r\n
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    Schools and parents shouldn\u2019t set limits on how much teenagers are allowed to work at jobs. Lee and Staff\u2019s carefully designed study found that \u201cintensive work does not affect the likelihood of high school dropout among youths who have a high propensity to spend long hours on the job\u201d (2007, p. 171). Teens should be trusted to learn how to manage their time.<\/div><\/blockquote>\r\nIn this latter example, it\u2019s now clear that Lee and Staff are scholars and that their empirical study is being used as evidence for this argumentative point. Using a source in this way invites the reader to check out Lee and Staff\u2019s work for themselves if they doubt this claim.\r\n\r\nMany writing instructors encourage their students to contextualize their use of sources by making a \u201cquotation sandwich<\/a>\u201d; that is, introduce the quote in some way and then follow it up with your own words. If you\u2019ve made a bad habit of dropping in unintroduced quotes, the quotation sandwich idea may help you improve your skills, but in general you don\u2019t need to approach every quote or paraphrase as a three-part structure to have well integrated sources. You should, however, avoid ending a paragraph with a quotation. If you\u2019re struggling to figure out what to write after a quote or close paraphrase, it may be that you haven\u2019t yet figured out what role the quote is playing in your own analysis. If that happens to you a lot, try writing the whole first draft in your own words and then incorporate material from sources as you revise with \u201cThey Say\/I Say\u201d in mind.\r\n

    Principle 3: Use sources efficiently<\/h2>\r\nSome student writers are in a rut of only quoting whole sentences. Some others, like myself as a student, get overly enamored of extended block quotes and the scholarly look they give to the page.7<\/a><\/sup> These aren\u2019t the worst sins of academic writing, but they get in the way of one of the key principles of writing with sources: shaping quotes and paraphrases efficiently. Efficiency follows from the second principle, because when you fully incorporate sources into your own explicit argument, you zero in on the phrases, passages, and ideas that are relevant to your points. It\u2019s a very good sign for your paper when most quotes are short (key terms, phrases, or parts of sentences) and the longer quotes (whole sentences and passages) are clearly justified by the discussion in which they\u2019re embedded. Every bit of every quote should feel indispensable to the paper. An overabundance of long quotes usually means that your own argument is undeveloped. The most incandescent quotes will not hide that fact from your professor.\r\n\r\nAlso, some student writers forget that quoting is not the only way to incorporate sources. Paraphasing<\/a> and summarizing are sophisticated skills that are often more appropriate to use than direct quoting. The first two paragraphs of the example passage above do not include any quotations, even though they are both clearly focused on presenting the work of others. Student writers may avoid paraphrasing out of fear of plagiarizing, and it\u2019s true that a poorly executed paraphrase will make it seem like the student writer is fraudulently claiming the wordsmithing work of others as his or her own. Sticking to direct quotes seems safer. However, it is worth your time to master paraphasing<\/a> because it often helps you be more clear and concise, drawing out only those elements that are relevant to the thread of your analysis.\r\n\r\nFor example, here\u2019s a passage from a hypothetical paper with a block quote that is fully relevant to the argument but, nevertheless, inefficient:\r\n
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    Drawing on a lifetime of research, Kahneman concludes our brains are prone to error:8<\/a><\/sup><\/div><\/blockquote>\r\n

    System 1 registers the cognitive ease with which it processes information, but it does not generate a warning signal when it becomes unreliable. Intuitive answers come to mind quickly and confidently, whether they originate from skills or from heuristics. There is no simple way for System 2 to distinguish between a skilled and a heuristic response. Its only recourse is to slow down and attempt to construct an answer on its own, which it is reluctant to do because it is indolent. Many suggestions of System 1 are casually endorsed with minimal checking, as in the bat-and-ball problem.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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    While people can get better at recognizing and avoiding these errors, Kahneman suggests, the more robust solutions involve developing procedures within organizations to promote careful, effortful thinking in making important decisions and judgments.<\/div><\/blockquote>\r\nEven a passage that is important to reference and is well contextualized in the flow of the paper will be inefficient if it introduces terms and ideas that aren\u2019t central to the analysis within the paper. Imagine, for example, that other parts of this hypothetical paper use Kahneman\u2019s other terms for System 1 (fast thinking) and System 2 (slow thinking); the sudden encounter of \u201cSystem 1\u201d and \u201cSystem 2\u201d would be confusing and tedious for your reader. Similarly, the terms \u201cheuristics\u201d and \u201cbat-and-ball problem\u201d might be unfamiliar to your reader. Their presence in the block quote just muddies the waters. In this case, a paraphrase is a much better choice. Here\u2019s an example passage that uses a paraphrase to establish the same points more clearly and efficiently:\r\n
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    Drawing on a lifetime of research, Kahneman summarizes that our brains are prone to error because they necessarily rely on cognitive shortcuts that may or may not yield valid judgments.9<\/a><\/sup> We have the capacity to stop and examine our assumptions, Kahneman points out, but we often want to avoid that hard work. As a result, we tend to accept our quick, intuitive responses. While people can get better at recognizing and avoiding these errors, Kahneman suggests that the more robust solutions involve developing procedures within organizations to promote careful, effortful thinking in making important decisions and judgments.<\/div><\/blockquote>\r\nNot only is the paraphrased version shorter (97 words versus 151), it is clearer and more efficient because it highlights the key ideas, avoiding specific terms and examples that aren\u2019t used in the rest of the paper. If other parts of your paper did refer to Kahneman\u2019s System 1 and System 2, then you might choose to include some quoted phrases to make use of some of Kahneman\u2019s great language. Perhaps something like this:\r\n
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    Drawing on a lifetime of research, Kahneman summarizes that our brains are prone to error because they necessarily rely on cognitive shortcuts that may or may not yield valid judgments.10<\/a><\/sup> System 1, Kahneman explains, \u201cdoes not generate a warning signal when it becomes unreliable.\u201d 11<\/a><\/sup> System 2 can stop and examine these assumptions, but it usually wants to avoid that hard work. As a result, our quick, intuitive responses are \u201ccasually endorsed with minimal checking.\u201d 12<\/a><\/sup> While people can get better at recognizing and avoiding these errors, Kahneman suggests, the more robust solutions involve developing procedures within organizations to promote careful, effortful thinking in making important decisions and judgments.<\/div><\/blockquote>\r\nWhether you choose a long quote, short quote, paraphrase or summary depends on the role that the source in playing in your analysis. The trick is to make deliberate, thoughtful decisions about how to incorporate ideas and words from others.\r\n\r\nParaphrasing, summarizing, and the mechanical conventions of quoting take a lot of practice to master. Numerous other resources (like those listed at the end of this chapter) explain these practices clearly and succinctly. Bookmark some good sources and refer to them as needed. If you suspect that you\u2019re in a quoting rut, try out some new ways of incorporating sources.\r\n

    Principle 4: Choose precise verbs of attribution<\/h2>\r\nIt\u2019s time to get beyond the all-purpose \u201csays.\u201d And please don\u2019t look up \u201csays\u201d in the thesaurus and substitute verbs like \u201cproclaim\u201d (unless there was actually a proclamation) or \u201cpronounce\u201d (unless there was actually a pronouncement). Here\u2019s a list of 15 useful alternatives:13<\/a><\/sup>\r\n