Writing at CCV

 

It’s likely that no matter what your first course is at CCV, you will be assigned to write a paper at some time during the semester. That’s because CCV knows effective communication skills—writing and speaking—are critical both in the classroom and in the workplace. However, if you’ve been away from college for a long time or this is your first college experience, you may be unsure of how to write a paper, especially a research paper.

 

Rest assured that CCV has support for you! Ask an advisor about writing or learning labs, which are free to all students. Ask also about special workshops on topics like research paper writing. In addition, many students learn to write their first college-level research paper in English Composition, a course that is best taken early in a student’s academic career. Don’t be afraid to talk to your academic advisor about your learning needs; he or she can be a valuable resource for you.

 

Also, feel free to talk to the instructor who assigned the paper. You might ask about written guidelines for the assignment, sample papers, or an evaluation rubric. Don’t be embarrassed about asking for clarification. By asking questions, you’ll not only help other students to think about the assignment more carefully, but you may also help the instructor to articulate his or her assumptions. Below are just a few questions you might raise with an instructor, either before, during or after class:

 

 

 

Plagiarism: What It Is & How to Avoid It

 

Whenever you're writing a paper, especially a paper that involves using sources to support your ideas, it's important also for you to think about plagiarism and how to avoid it. Plagiarism, as defined by CCV, is the presentation of the language, ideas, or thoughts of another person as one's own work in the preparation of a paper, laboratory report, oral presentation, or any other type of presentation. Of course, many people understand that buying a paper or purposely using someone else's ideas or language as one's own is academic dishonesty. However, it's also important to understand that plagiarism can result from carelessness or misunderstanding the rules.

 

Below are some general tips for appropriately giving credit to sources in a paper.

 

1. Keep track of all sources. Whenever you are consulting a source that you may or may not use in your final paper, be sure to copy down the bibliographic information about the source. This varies depending on the type of source it is, but, in general, you need the author(s), title, publisher, and date. If it is a web source, you will also need the address and the date of access.

 

2. Take careful notes. You must be very careful when writing notes from your source. Make sure you include the page number and indicate, with quotation marks, whether or not the passage is a direct quote. If you are paraphrasing a passage from the source, be sure that you are really putting it in your own words and that you are also changing the way the words are arranged. Perhaps you want to highlight the words that appear in both the original passage and in your notes. If there are too many of the same words in both, you're probably in danger of plagiarizing the passage.

 

In addition, it's a good idea to keep copies of your work. You will want to double-check your notes once the paper is completed. It's easy for mistakes to happen and a source to get omitted from your final draft, resulting in plagiarism. If you photocopy pages from a book or print web pages from your source, be sure to keep them also.

 

3. Avoid "cutting and pasting" from an Internet source into your paper. Though it may save you time in re-typing quoted material, the potential consequences outweigh any gain. First, there's the problem of over-using direct quotes, especially long or extended quotes. It's so easy to cut and paste from the Internet that many student writers over-rely on this kind of material, which leads to papers that are choppy, confusing and disjointed. Secondly, and more importantly, it's easy to forget--in the revising process--which is the borrowed material and which is your own, often resulting in plagiarism. Since instructors readily use the Internet to check the writing in papers, carelessness here can result in a failed assignment and/or a failed class, which is too high a price to pay for the ease of cutting and pasting.

 

4. Understand the system of documentation that's appropriate for your paper. Most CCV instructors require students to use MLA or APA style of documentation. MLA is often used for papers in writing, humanities, and history courses. APA is often used for papers in the social sciences or education. You can easily find information about these documentation styles at a CCV site and online.

 

An important thing to know here is that both of these styles use parenthetical citations. In other words, footnotes or endnotes are not needed. A parenthetical citation is when you include a brief reference to the source right in the text of your paper-every time you use a direct quote, paraphrase, or idea. A Works Cited or Reference page is added at the end, which lists your sources in full detail.

 

5. Understand when and how to appropriately cite sources in your paper. What you include in a parenthetical citation depends on which style (MLA or APA) you're following. In general, when using MLA style, you include the author's last name and the page number. When using APA style, you include the author's last name, the publication date, and the page number (if it is a direct quote). Again, information on MLA and APA styles of documentation is readily available.

 

Whatever style of documentation you use, it is probably most important to know when you must cite a source, and this is the same for all styles. You must cite the following types of material from a source:

 

DIRECT QUOTES

 

This is when you use quoted material in your paper. The quote should include the exact words of the author or source framed within quotation marks and then designate the source at the end of the sentence. For example, if you were to use a direct quote from George J. Demko's book, Why in the World: Adventures in Geography (the title should be underlined or italicized), it would look like:

 

"It's hard to think of any place that is untouched by human contact, even the cruelest, most hostile environments, such as the glaciers of Antarctica and the broiling, waterless Sahara. All places bear the imprimatur of human visits and habitations, or the vestiges of such connections" (Demko 13).

 

Or you might preface the quote, connecting it to the point you were making in your paper:

 

George Demko, former director of the United States Office of the Geographer, might agree that humans have impacted, sometimes significantly, the areas we have come to see as wilderness. After all, he writes, "It's hard to think of any place that is untouched by human contact, even the cruelest, most hostile environments, such as the glaciers of Antarctica and the broiling, waterless Sahara"(13).

 

Note that the second example is more effective than the first because it gives a context for the quote. It lets the reader know a little more about the author of your source, which can be helpful to establish his or her credibility. Even more importantly, however, is the way the second example reinforces the paper's thesis or main point. Many writers forget to make these connections, thinking that a quote speaks for itself. Only rarely is this true.

 

Also, this quote demonstrates why students should use direct quotes sparingly in their papers. For a paper to be most effective, it's important to get a sense of the writer's voice. When direct quotes from different sources are used frequently in a paper, it's difficult to keep that sense of the one writer's voice.

           

PARAPHRASING 

 

This is when you use the basic meaning of an author's statement but change the words and structure of the sentence. For example, using Demko's quote above, you might paraphrase it in the following way:

 

Humans leave their mark wherever they go, even those places we have come to see as inhospitable or extreme (Demko 13). 

 

Or you might write:

 

According to George Demko, former director of the United States Office of the Geographer, humans leave their mark wherever they go, even those places we have come to see as inhospitable or extreme (13).

 

Notice that you can't just change a few words or shuffle words around and still call it a paraphrase. If you do, it's considered plagiarism--even when you have a citation right next to it!

  

IDEAS

 

This is when you take the idea or information that the author provides but completely change the wording and structure of the sentence(s).

 

Although the conditions of a place vary widely, they do share one thing in common. It's rare to find a place that is not impacted in some way by humans (Demko 13).

 

Here you give credit for the information that is derived from your source, but you are really only summarizing that information rather than paraphrasing it.

 

6. Include a Reference or Works Cited Page. A Reference or Works Cited page lists the sources that you have cited in your paper. Only sources that show up in the body of the paper should be listed on this page. (If you don't use and cite a source in the body of your paper, it can't be listed in the Works Cited). 

 

Conversely, all the sources that you use in the body of your paper must be listed here. (You can't cite a source in the paper then forget to include it on the Works Cited page). Because you are only giving a small amount of information about each source within the paper (like last name of author and page number), the Works Cited or Reference page is where the reader can find the full bibliographic information about each source. Remember that there are plenty of reference guides to help you with this. To illustrate how a source might be listed, according to MLA style, here's the source used in the examples above:

 

Demko, George J. with Jerome Agel and Eugene Boe. Why in the World: Adventures in Geography. NY: Doubleday, 1992.

 

(Please note that the title should be underlined or italicized).  

 

 

FINAL ADVICE

 

It's important to understand what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. Academic dishonesty is taken very seriously at CCV. It can result in failed assignments or courses and even suspension or dismissal for more than one incident. However, plagiarism doesn't have to happen. By asking questions and paying attention to the "rules" associated with citing sources, anyone can avoid making a costly mistake.