Category: Teaching Source Use


Archive for the ‘Teaching Source Use’ Category

Sep 08 2010

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

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

  • Introduce the librarians
  • Tour the library’s website
  • Have students search for subject-area guides
  • Interpret a search results page
  • Differentiate between and practice author searches, title searches, and keyword searches
  • Introduce both general and specialized databases

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

  • Distinguish between library databases and the Internet
  • Distinguish between subject headings and keywords
  • Introduce advanced searches  (for library databases and Google)

The Academic Writer by Lisa Ede

  • Teach students how to keep a research log, tracking their search terms and successful keywords
  • Teach time management strategies, situating research within the larger writing process
  • Teach students how to use Journal Finder and periodical indexes
  • Introduce special collections

Meeting of Minds by Patsy Callaghan and Ann Dobyns

  • Demonstrate and provide practice brainstorming key terms/concepts
  • Introduce Boolean terms and other strategies for limiting and filtering results

Sep 08 2010

Technology Tip (For Windows) – Format Citations with Hanging Indents

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To format citations with hanging indents in Word:

  1. Select the text of all your citation entries.
  2. On the “Home” ribbon, click the expand arrow next to “Paragraph” to access the menu shown at left.
  3. Under the “Special” drop-down menu, select “Hanging.”
  4. Click “OK.”

Keyboard short-cut:

After selecting the text, press Ctrl + T (or Command + T on a Mac).

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

Sep 08 2010

Scholarly vs. popular sources (Contributed by G. Hlavaty & M. Townsend)

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Corollary Homework

Now that you have chosen one popular periodical and one scholarly journal for your project, you will compare their rhetorical elements. This exercise will help you develop ideas for your final rhetorical analysis paper. Please answer the following questions as specifically as possible:

1. What types of articles appear in each periodical?

2. Compare the author’s credentials from each periodical. What types of authors publish in each one?

3. What types of ads appear in each publication?

4. Considering article types and ads, describe the audience for each of these publications.

5. Do these periodicals use research? Are there citations? Which seems more solid?

6. Do any of the articles use visuals (graphs, photos, etc.)? What types? What are their purposes?

7. For which assignments would popular magazines be most useful as sources? For which assignments would scholarly journals be most useful?

8. Consider the answers for all of these questions. In a short paragraph, sum up the strengths, weaknesses, and purpose of each of these publications.