The College Writing Toolkit - Tried and Tested Ideas for Teaching College Writing - Martha C. Pennington
9. Paraphrase Integration Task: Increasing Authenticity of Practice in Using Academic Sources
The College Writing Toolkit - Tried and Tested Ideas for Teaching College Writing - Martha C. Pennington
Zuzana Tomaš [+]
Eastern Michigan University
Description
Zuzana Tomaš, in “Paraphrase Integration Task: Increasing Authenticity of Practice in Using Academic Sources,” raises a perennial problem in source-based writing by student writers, especially (she suggests) students writing in a second language: plagiarism. Tomaš draws together the work of theorists in the field to discuss the various reasons, cultural and pedagogical, that plagiarism arises, and she draws on her own teaching and research experience to offer a developmental activity for a specific skill in academic writing: integrating paraphrases of source material into an original argument. Tomaš notes that there is a dearth of teaching material enabling students to practice this skill within an authentic context and so to develop the complex abilities required to properly incorporate other people’s work within one’s own. Her paraphrase integration task, presented with a wealth of examples, seeks to bridge the gap between sentence-level exercises and the complex task of integrating multiple sources in a research paper. This is an activity that could be beneficial to first-language as well as second-language writers in the college/university classroom.