6.3: Citation highlighting
- Page ID
- 16617
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Activity Guidelines
Suggested course level
Lower level undergraduate
Activity purpose
- Students will apply their citation knowledge to their own writing and see the balance between their own voice and the voices of their sources.
Materials required
- Highlighters
- Markers or coloured pens
- Student draft
Activity instructions
- Ask students to bring a draft of an assignment that requires source use.
- Give them each 3 markers (you can also put students in groups of 3, give them each a marker, and tell them to pass their marker to their left after each round).
- In the first round, ask students to use one coloured pen to underline or highlight sections of their work that contain direct quotes from their sources.
- In the second round, ask students to use a different colour to underline or highlight sections of their work that contain paraphrasing or summarizing from a source. (The ideas of the source, not the words.)
- In the third round, ask students to underline or highlight sections of the work that contain their own ideas or analysis.
- Then, ask the debrief questions. As you do, tell students to put a star around any place where they’ve realized they need to make a change (add a citation, turn a quotation into paraphrasing, adding some analysis etc). You might also give students time to revise in class so that you can help them.
Debrief questions / activities
- In your work, who’s voice is most important right now: the sources or yours?
- What percentage of the work contains citation? Paraphrasing? Summary? Your own ideas? Does this balance feel right to you?
- We’ve learned that you should quote because the words of the author is important, and that you should usually do some kind of analysis to the quote. Can you find a quote in your piece that doesn’t have any analysis or that could be paraphrased or summarized instead?
- We’ve learned that when you paraphrase, you should not look directly at the source material and instead explain the quote as if you were talking to a friend. Can you find any paraphrasing in your piece that is too similar to the original quote?
- Have you noticed any place where your voice disappears from the piece? How could you make your voice more present in that section?
- Have you found a section where you’re not sure if you’ve paraphrased, cited or used your own ideas?
- Are all of your paraphrased or summarized sections properly cited?
- Based on this activity, can you think of 3 changes you’d like to make to this draft?
- What questions do you have about citation after doing this exercise?
Activity variations
- Have students discuss their results with a partner and come up with a revision plan.
- Have students work on revision for the remainder of the class.
- Hand out note cards so that students can write down their remaining questions and ask them anonymously.
Tags: research and documentation, individual, self-reflection, citation, paraphrasing, source use, research, peer review, revision