Each of the following exercises shows the original source, and then a student’s sentence and/or citation about that source. Each sentence and each citation has at least one thing wrong with it (most have more than one). Each of the following exercises shows the original source, and then a student’s sentence and/or citation about that source. Correct each of them
Source A: an article entitled “What’s Killing the Aspen?” by Michelle Nijhuis, found in the December 2008 edition of Smithsonian magazine, volume 39, no. 9. The article goes from page 26 to 27, and this paragraph was taken from p. 26.
Original paragraph:
By 2006, close to 150,000 acres of Colorado aspen were dead or damaged, according to aerial surveys. By the following year, the grim phenomenon had a name – “sudden aspen decline,” or SAD – and the devastated acreage had more than doubled, with some 13 percent of the state’s aspen showing declines. In many places, patches of bare and dying treetops are as noticeable as missing teeth, and some sickly areas stretch for miles. Aspen declines are also underway in Wyoming, Utah, and elsewhere in the Rockies. Surveys of two national forests in Arizona showed that from 2000 to 1007, lower-elevation areas lost 90 percent of their aspens.
1. Student’s Sentence:
Two years ago, about 150,000 acres of Colorado aspen had been killed by what scientists deemed “sudden aspen decline,” also known as SAD (Nijhuis 26).
What guidelines are you using? MLA or APA or what?
Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing is perhaps the most important skill you need to avoid plagiarism and to help you learn from the sources you read. In essence, it means rewording the original in a way that does not copy any of the phrases or even the sentence structure of the original piece. Very often, it also means shortening the original to a summary. Other than preventing plagiarism, there are three reasons that paraphrasing is vital:
1. It helps the writer to turn someone else’s work into something in his or her own voice.
2. If the reader has not already read the original source, paraphrasing helps to summarize it for the reader so that he or she understands that to which the writer is referring.
3. If the reader has already read the original source, paraphrasing allows him or her to receive a short summary of that source to remind him/herself, as well as to understand the way in which the writer interprets that source (since all of us interpret things we read in different ways).
There are several “tricks of the trade” to help authors with paraphrasing. Here are the ones I find most useful.
1. Look away from the original source. Really. Because paraphrasing is a way of digesting the material you’ve read, it’s important to see what you actually got out of it rather than copying it. Close the book, minimize the webpage, do whatever you need to do to refrain from the temptation of just changing a few words. Then, write what you remember. Keep in mind that a paraphrase is often a summary, so you don’t have to get all the details, but just hit the highlights. Once you’ve written the first draft of your paraphrase, then you can look back at the original source to see if you missed anything important. (Hint: this is also a great way to study for tests, because it tells you if you’ve forgotten anything important!)
2. Make sure you haven’t copied any phrases. Remember that plagiarism can happen in just a few words. Double-check your paraphrase to make sure you haven’t internalized key phrases and used them unintentionally.
3. Be sure that you’re not copying the structure of the sentence. This one sounds hard, but basically it means that you really have to understand the whole original and be able to tell it in your own way rather than just changing a few words. For instance, if your original source said, “I left the building and walked down the street to the post office,” you shouldn’t say, “He exited the office and strolled along the road until he reached the post office.” This is still plagiarism because it uses the author’s same basic structure. A better paraphrase would be, “He went to the post office after leaving” or “He stopped by the post office on his way out.”
4. Be careful when using a thesaurus. A lot of students like to use a thesaurus to avoid plagiarism, and it does have its place. If you can’t think of another way to say something, a thesaurus might help jog your mind. However, be sure that you know what the word you’re using really means. Many words have connotations that you might not mean to put in. You’re much better off using a dictionary, which could give you the synonyms of words as well as their definitions. Here’s an example. This is a famous nursery rhyme:
Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep
And can't tell where to find them.
Leave them alone, And they'll come home,
Wagging their tails behind them
(“Little Bo Peep”)
If I just use my thesaurus to rephrase it, it could sound like this:
Modest Bo Peep mislaid her followers and was unable to proclaim the station. Migrate them forsaken, and they will materialize at the shelter, quivering their trains next to them.
A better solution might be to look away from the nursery rhyme and just try to remember what it said:
Bo Peep was a small girl whose job was to take care of her sheep. She was careless, though, and didn’t keep of track of where they went. The advice she got was to be patient and wait for them at home, where they would surely return.
Original: from the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln.
“ Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Appropriate use of quotation: Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” opened with a reminder that it had only been 87 years since the founders of the United States developed a new concept of a country in which “all men are created equal.” (Notice that I did not include a citation here because I had already given the source, and a page number is not available. I also put quotes around the title because it is a short work, which requires quotations.)
Inappropriate use of quotation: In the “Gettysburg Address,” Lincoln said that “four score and and seven years ago” the “fathers” of the country “brought forth on this continent, a new nation” that was “conceived in Liberty” as well as “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” (This has far too many quotes and does not demonstrate that the student has any clue what this sentence means. It is plagiarism.)
Another inappropriate use of quotation: Lincoln told his listeners that just 87 years ago his fathers created a new nation that was “conceived in Liberty” and “dedicated to the proposition that all” people are equal. (This does not quote all the words taken from the speech, and still uses too many of the author’s own words.)
i don't find anything wrong with that sentence any clues ??
i think the only wrong thing is that the student only filliped flopped the words but there still using the same flow so its considered plagiarism but whats wrong about the citation that's what i don't get
I think you're on the right track, but you can double-check yourself by means of this webpage:
(Broken Link Removed)
Be sure to go through the ENTIRE webpage, including all the examples and explanations.
You still haven't said whether you're using MLA or APA or what?
whats MLA APA lol am doing an online course in english
MLA and APA are two of the several guidelines used for research papers and citation of sources:
http://www.aresearchguide.com/styleguides.html
I hope someone will teach you about them soon since you're clearly learning about how to cite (first question).
am using the MLA Formatting and Style Guide so like i really need help in the first question whats wrong with the citation ?
Corrected Sentence:
Two years ago, close to 150,000 acres of Colorado aspen were dead or damaged due to a phenomenon called "sudden aspen decline," commonly referred to as SAD (Nijhuis 26).
Explanation:
In the original sentence, the student incorrectly stated that the aspen had been killed, while the original paragraph states that the aspen were dead or damaged. Additionally, the citation is missing the page number, which should be included after the author's name. The corrected sentence clarifies that the aspen were dead or damaged and includes the correct citation format with the page number.