Strategies for Teaching Students How to Cite Sources – Tips Adapted from our Rhetorics


Sep 08 2010

Strategies for Teaching Students How to Cite Sources – Tips Adapted from our Rhetorics

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Writing: A Manual for the Digital Age by David Blakesley and Jeffrey L. Hoogeveen

  • Talk about citation as a rhetorical strategy
  • Define and discuss common knowledge
  • Teach note-taking strategies that facilitate citation
  • Discuss examples of effective and ineffective citations
  • List a variety of citation styles and discuss their connections to disciplinary values/beliefs
  • Work through citation examples as a class
  • Show students how to create hanging indentations (see technology tip below)


Everything’s an Argument by Andrea A. Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz

  • Discuss what documenting sources has to do with composing arguments
  • Consider how citation systems are adapted for non-academic writing
  • Examine how documentation styles vary by discipline
  • Compare the similarities and differences between two prevalent citation systems
  • Work through creating citations for some common – and sometimes difficult to cite – sources

The Academic Writer by Lisa Ede

  • Examine how citation entries vary depending on the type of source (and by extension, how you can predict the type of source based on the citation)
  • Create source maps for citations of commonly used source types (see p. 316 for an example)

Meeting of Minds by Patsy Callaghan and Ann Dobyns

  • Discuss citation/documentation as part of the research process
  • Teach both in-text and works cited/reference list citation strategies

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