Trivialize or Transfer

For a year after earning my Master's degree, I taught dual enrollment at a high school. I taught introduction to Composition and Introduction to Literature, and because this was a small school and I was the dual enrollment English teacher, I had several students who took composition one trimester and literature the next. In my composition course, I taught citation and documentation. So, when I saw several of the same students in my literature class and I told them they needed to cite the stories, poems, and plays from the textbook when writing their essays, I assumed all would be well. After all, they had demonstrated to me they knew how to do so.

However...

On the first assignment, there was absolutely nothing to differentiate between my new students and old ones. Citations were routinely absent or incorrect, and even bizarrely formatted. I hoped this would be an issue quickly resolved with a brief lesson and reminder after the first essay, but this persisted the entire semester among all of my students, and I didn’t have time to divert from literature to teach citations. And it wasn't limited to citations. I saw students who in one class had improved and excelled, written excellent essays, fall into the doldrums in the next. Near the end of the school year, I asked one of the other English teachers (who retired that year – give you an idea how long he'd been around) if they taught citation. He rolled his eyes and his head and answered: “every year!”

In short, there should have been noticeable differences between the students I had had in composition and those who had not taken composition in my literature course. But there was none. Everything they had learned and practiced was gone.

I've even seen this phenomenon happen in class. I'll teach a topic or how to do something for an essay or assignment, see it implemented in one assignment, but when students should be reapplying these practices in later assignments, it's ignored. It was as if previous lessons and concepts were locked to a respective assignment without any application beyond the task for which they were taught.

Imagine teaching someone to drive. You teach them how best to brake at a traffic light. How much pressure to apply, when to start braking, how close to the light they need to come to a complete stop, so they make a safe, controlled stop. And then, when you tell them to park, they fly right through the parking stall, as if parking and stopping at a light somehow required two completely different operations.

This is the danger of trivializing our education, of seeing each bit of information as isolated and only useful within the context it was first taught and assuming each new context carries with it brand new rules and expectations. It's like saying, “I was tested on it, so what do I need it for?” when that same information will hold value in another context. It's like an architect ignoring every geometry lesson he's ever had, and a surgeon ignoring all of his biology.

Let me give an example both personal and professional. I have taught at five different universities and colleges. Each school has different standards and expectations. On my end, I have my education, training, and experience that prepared me to teach and adapt to new circumstances. Give me a set of expectations and requirements and I'll produce a curriculum to match it. However, if I took everything I already knew and set it aside and acted as if I needed a brand new set of information, I'd be an absolute pest to the rest of the faculty as I ask them things I should already know. They'd kick me to the curb as soon as they could find a replacement. Or just cancel the classes and get rid of me.

So don't confine your education. Don't leave what you learn in the classroom. Value it by practicing it, by looking for new ways to employ it, by experimenting with what you've learned. Transfer your knowledge from one area to another. And Don't trivialize it.

Show that you Know: Source Integration Overview

Source integration is a matter of properly introducing, referencing, citing, and explaining research sources. On the one hand this is important for coherent writing. On the other, it's an important way to demonstrate familiarity with the research itself. If a source is poorly integrated, it suggests the writer didn't understand the information.

So, when you embark on a research project and are faced with referencing your research in your essay, take the following into consideration.

• Research First: When starting a research project, you shouldn't start with drafting the actual essay. Instead, invest in research and learn more about your topic.
• Active Research: Good source integration means good research, and good research means taking the time to read closely, take notes, and evaluate your sources.
• Take Notes: Jotting down interesting information, highlighting or bookmarking intriguing passages, and otherwise making personal records of what you learn from your research.
• Introduce & Explain sources: Any time you put research into your own writing you are repurposing and recontextualizing it. Therefore, it is essential to take the time to explain your research before summarizing, paraphrasing, or quoting it (also, see Hit & Run Quotes below).
• Summarize: Explaining the main points, thesis, and arguments of a source.
• Paraphrase: Taking a selection of a larger piece and reiterating the main points in your own words.
• Quote: Using the exact words of a source in your own piece.
• Blended Words: Carefully integrating a quote with your own words.
• In-Text Citations: Knowing where to place in-text citations, and why they go there.
• Synthesis: Finding and recognizing where your sources have related points so you can reference them together.

Knowing how to integrate sources is important, but sometimes a good way to figure out why we do something is to understand how not to do it.

• Hit & Run Quotes: This term comes from a book entitled They Say/I Say, and it refers to improperly introduced and explained quotes.
• Patchwriting: Paraphrasing and quoting at the same time and without quotation marks. This involves taking a selection from a source, changing a few words here and there, and not treating it as a quote. This can be borderline plagiarism. Instead, quote or use more of your own words.
• Just the first few pages: Don't just rely on a few pithy statements from the opening pages of a book or article; take the time to go through the entire piece and you'll find more useful information.
• Excessive Integration: There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Sometimes, it's easier to just quote ad nauseum or even give too much supplementary information.
• Plagiarism: The failure to properly acknowledge research, or, taking the work of another passing it off as your own. This is one of the worst things you can ever do.

Improper source integration can harm an essay. Sometimes it’s easy to just drop in quotes or citations and call it good. However, good source integration is more than just a stylistic issue. Coherent writing means a coherent thought process, so coherently integrating sources suggests a better understanding of the material. An author who drops in quotes willy-nilly probably just found and crammed them in there and doesn’t understand what they are saying. Taking the time to introduce, explain, synthesize, and blend shows you know the information well enough it is part of your own thought process and knowledge: it shows you are confident in your knowledge and you can control the information.

The Art of Summary

A summary is when you use your own words to explain something written by someone else.

Summaries are an important aspect of writing. They offer a way to provide background information, explain research, events, or other texts in fewer words than originally presented. They are also a manifestation of the writer's own skill and understanding of whatever it is they are summarizing.

When to Summarize

Summarize when you need information from somewhere else. Need. Don't just summarize for the sake of providing information or filling space. Make sure the information you provide by summarizing is relevant to your own argument or project. If you’re summarizing a book, it's unlikely you will need a paragraph explaining the premise of every single chapter; just a description of the main points relevant to what you are saying.

Summaries provide more than just additional information. They're a way to demonstrate your understanding of a text, and, in turn, how knowledgeable and reliable you are about the topic you're writing about. For example, in an episode of The Simpsons, Bart summarizes Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe as “the story of a Russian farmer and his tool.” Bart deserves some credit for creativity, but from this incorrect summary, it'll be difficult to trust anything else he has to say on the subject.

A poorly written or inaccurate summary let alone misinterpreting the very premise of the text, says you either did not read whatever it is you are summarizing, or you didn't understand it. The only solutions for bad summaries are either get to know the original text better, or just not summarize it.

Summarize Ethically

Here's a situation. You're well into a research project. You find a source that seems useful, but halfway through, it starts making perfectly valid claims that refute the thesis of your own research. What do you do?

What you should do is revise your thesis to accommodate the new research.

What you should not do is ignore the new information, or, even worse, include the source but conveniently omit the details that refute your thesis. That's an unethical summary. When you summarize, represent what you summarize honestly. Don't ignore something just because it doesn't fit with what you were saying in the first place.

In short, honestly provide the information that is relevant.

Providing Citations

Any time you use information from somewhere or someone else, provide a citation. This is especially true of summaries because you don't use quotation marks to set their exact words, and summaries can span several sentences. Give credit where credit is due. Take a few words or a sentence to signal you are using someone else's idea and provide the appropriate citation, in-text and on your Works Cited/References/Bibliography page. If you don't signal you're summarizing, the border between your ideas and their ideas gets fuzzy. If you don't cite, your information can't be checked or further researched by your reader; and it’s being lazy.

If you don't introduce the summary and cite it, then there's nothing to say the information is someone else's. That's called plagiarism.

Summarizing is an important part of writing, and writing research in particular; but if it’s not done appropriately, it can cause problems, the least of which is making yourself look bad. The worst is looking like a thief. Respect your sources. Do them justice. Treat them fairly, and as the property of others.