INCORPORATE YOUR
SOURCES
Integrating Your Sources (+ Handout)
• Before each quote, you should introduce
the information.
• After each quote, you need to explain the
material to the reader and then provide a
response.
• By providing a response to the sourced
material, you are integrating the support into
your argument.
• After your explain and response, CONNECT
your point to what you will say next.
What Is MLA Format?
• MLA Stands for “Modern Language Association”
• The MLA makes rules for the writers of research
papers in English and the Humanities so that
everyone who is doing research is following the
same set of rules and we can all understand each
other.
What kinds of things do I need to do to
have correct MLA Format?
• Part of MLA style is format.
• Margins
• Heading
• Font, etc.
• Please see the formatting example that is on the class blog for my
expectations on formatting.
• Part of MLA style is citation.
• This means giving credit to your sources and avoiding plagiarism.
• Citation is also meant to make is easy for your reader find your
sources if he or she wishes to read them.
MLA Citation has two main parts:
1. Parenthetical citations. Ex: (Anderson 3)
– Are in the body (main text) of your essay.
– Come after each paraphrase or quote that you did not
write or think of yourself, you must indicate which
source you are using in order to avoid plagiarism.
Consult your textbook, a handbook, or the handout on
Moodle for more detail.
2. A Works Cited page:
– On its own page at the end of your essay
– Lists every source you used in alphabetical order by
the last name of the author.
– Each works cited entry must contain specific
information in a specific order. Consult a handbook
or the handout on moodle for more details.
Four Basic Rules for Avoiding Plagiarism
Make sure all word-for-word quotes have quote marks
showing where they begin and end.
2. Make sure to make the difference between your ideas
and your sources’ ideas clear when paraphrasing.
3. Identify where each quote OR paraphrased idea came
from in the body of your paper using in-text citations.
4. Make sure that each source you quote OR paraphrase
in your paper is correctly listed on your Works Cited
page.
1.
Pass out the Incorporating Sources Handout and
ask students if they printed the MLA Templates
Handout
Some Myths about Plagiarism:
• Myth 1: As long as I have a source on my works cited page, I
don’t have to mention it in the body of my paper.
• WRONG! Any time you use ideas or words from a source, you
must include an in-text citation.
• Myth 2: As long as I change one or two words in a quote, I
don’t have to put quote marks around it or do a citation.
• WRONG! Changing one or two words in a quote and replacing
them with synonyms is STILL PLAGIARISM if you keep the
original ideas and/or sentence structure.
• Myth 3: As long as I paraphrase correctly, using my own
words and sentence structure to express an idea or give
information, I don’t need an in-text citation.
• WRONG! Even if you use your own words, if the specific
idea/information originally came from somewhere else, you
must cite it.
More Myths about Plagiarism:
• Myth 4: I don’t need to cite exact words, ideas or information
I find on the internet.
• WRONG! Treat your internet sources with the same respect you
have for your print or online database sources.
• Myth 5: It is appropriate to use an old essay from a friend,
buy an essay, or have someone help me write an essay using
his or her wording instead of mine.
• WRONG! All of these are called collusion, and they are all
plagiarism.
• Myth 6: I won’t get caught if I plagiarize.
• WRONG! Plagiarism is quite obvious to most professors, and
many of them use plagiarism detecting software.
Resources to Help you Avoid Plagiarism
• Use turnitin.com ! Upload your essay several days before the
due date, wait an hour or two, then “view” it. You should be
able to see your own originality score and make sure all of your
highlighted quotes are correctly cited.
• As long as it is well before the due date, you will then be
able to check this then delete your essay and upload a new
revised version when you are ready to submit.
• Other Resources:
• Online plagiarism tutorial and quizzes from Simon Fraser University
http://www.lib.sfu.ca/node/10442
• Plagiarism Self Test from Western Carolina University
http://www.wcu.edu/12083.asp
• University of Southern Mississippi’s Plagiarism Tutorial
http://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/plag/plagiarismtutorial.php
So you know you have to quote….
• ….but what is the BEST way to quote? It’s not a good idea to
simply “drop in” a quote without making it a part of your own
sentence.
Original Quote from the source:
• “He is already fighting hard to stay alive. Which also means that kind
Peeta Mellark, the boy who gave me the bread, is fighting hard to kill
me.”
• Drop-In Quote:
• Katniss remains suspicious of Peeta. “Which also means that kind
Peeta Mellark, the boy who gave me the bread, is fighting hard to kill
me” (Collins 60).
• Integrated Quote:
• Katniss remains suspicious of Peeta. When she realizes that he is
“already fighting hard to stay alive”, Katniss decides that “the boy who
gave me the bread is [also] fighting hard to kill me” (Collins 60).
The “Quote Sandwich”
• This is a way to integrate quotes into your paper smoothly
and avoid drop-in quotes.
• The first piece of “bread”
• Introduce quote, possibly mention author, connect quote to what
you were saying before.
• The “Meat”
• Your quote, correctly cited with in-text citation.
• The second piece of “bread”
• Interpretation/explanation of quote (NOT simply rewording the
quote), connect quote to what you will say next.
Another Way To Do This:
• Introduce: set up the quote, perhaps mention the author, give
the reader the context they will need to understand why you are
using this quote
• Quote: put quotation marks around the words that are not
your own. Don’t forget to make the quote part of your own
sentence—you can use only PART of their sentence and then
EMBED their sentence into yours. Don’t forget the in-text
citation!
• Example: Your words, discussing and “setting up for the quote that
you have here” (cite).
• Explain: explain the quote further, perhaps restating its main
points in your own words, especially if the quote is technical or
complex.
• Connect: connect the quote to your overall argument, and/or
what you will say next!
Online Examples of Quote Sandwiches
• http://www.csun.edu/~hflrc006/quote.html
• https://sites.google.com/site/sasamtani/quote_sandwich
003.jpg
• Notice that both of these examples make the quote a part
of a sentence the essay author wrote, and notice that both
examples give credit to the source’s author.
Use the Quote Sandwich method to
structure paragraphs!
By using a detailed quote sandwich, we can write whole
paragraphs using only one quote/point
Example of detailed quote sandwich using 2 different sources and
comparing them:
Introduce quote
from literature
Quote w/in-text
citation
Analysis of
quote
Introduction of
outside source
Outside source
quote w/in-text
citation
Analysis of
quote and
connection to
thesis and main
point
The poverty that faces District 12 is vividly described in the novel.
The narrator, Katniss, describes how the people are so hopeless and
defeated that they have “hunched shoulders and swollen knuckles” and
they have even “stopped trying to scrub the coal dust out of their broken
nails [or] the lines of their sunken faces” (4). In this sentence, Suzanne
Collins describes the conditions of poverty and hopelessness, using
words like ‘sunken’ and ‘hunched.’ All throughout the chapters that
describe District 12 the language portrays a broken down people who
have no hope because of their overwhelming poverty and hunger. Many
readers may think that such poverty cannot exist in real life, or if it does
it is only in other far-away countries. However, research into the
poorest areas of America tells a different story. There are many
communities and neighborhoods that are just as poor, oppressed, and
downtrodden as District 12. In fact, there are many neighborhoods in
the United States where the average salary per household is shockingly
“below minimum wage” and even “two or three full time workers in a
single household may not be enough to pay for basic necessities like
rent, food, and medical care” (Scheckner). It is clear that although
American Society may not be as obviously oppressive as the Capitol in
The Hunger Games, there are still some very serious problems with our
economic system when a hard-working family cannot even afford the
basics without relying on credit cards, government aid, or working like a
slave at more than one job.
Example Disagreement
• In the article “Why the Odds are Still Stacked against
women in Hollywood,” the author interviews several
women who believe that women are partially to blame
for the gender imbalance in Hollywood, citing
women’s tendency not to self-promote and to seek
approval in a way that hurts their careers (Masters).
However, by focusing on what women are doing
Responds to article with wrong, the article overlooks the deeper problem of a
business that seems to deny equal opportunity to
your own opinion
women no matter what they do. If a woman acts
boldly, “like a man,” in order to be successful, she
risks getting a reputation as bossy and hard to work
with, thereby missing out on opportunities. But if we
are to believe the women Masters interviews, if a
Voice indicating phrase,
woman acts feminine and accommodating, she loses
identifying that these
big opportunities to those who are willing to be more
aren’t my ideas.
pushy. This is a choice with no right answer, no
matter how a women chooses to present herself.
Further explanation of
Women in the entertainment industry should have
why the writer disagrees. opportunities based on merit alone, and now socially
enforced ideas about “how women (should) behave”.
Introduces article,
summarizes point to be
discussed, gives credit to
author using in-text
citation.
• NOTE: quote marks at the end are so-called “scare quotes” that
indicate sarcasm/disagreement, not a citation
Example Agreement
Introduces article, quotes
point to be discussed, gives
credit to author using intext citation.
Agreement + backing up
their points
Further explanation of why
I agree, adding something
to the conversation.
• Deryl Hannah argues that representations
of gay and lesbian people of color are
important because to portray the LBGT
community and its allies as entirely white
would “inaccurately promote a world in
which it would appear that LGBT people of
color do not exist, or that acceptance of
LGBT people is exclusive to white
populations” (Hannah). I agree with
Hannah that inaccurate portrayals of the
diversity within the gay and lesbian
community are troubling, a point that needs
emphasizing because many people still
believe that minority communities are
backward and intolerant when it comes to
their own LBGT members. To portray
white communities as “enlightened” and
accepting and minority communities as
oblivious at best and bigoted at worst
perpetuates old, ugly racial stereotypes.
Example Agree and Disagree at Once
Introduces article,
quotes point to be
discussed, gives credit to
author using in-text
citation.
Agree and Disagree,
using “Although ” or
“however”
Further explanation of
the point on which you
disagree.
• In the article “Tyler Perry’s Money Machine,”
Eugene Robinson argues that even though Tyler
Perry has been called formulaic, he is successful
because he is one of a very small number of film
makers who is making films that portray African
Americans as “people relating to other people”
(347). Although I agree with Robinson up to a
point, and I certainly see the importance of films
in which minority characters are fully rounded,
not stereotypes, I cannot accept his overriding
assumption that African-American viewers are
“settling” for Perry’s films only because there is
nothing better that portrays them positively. In
this time of dwindling ticket sales and increasing
ticket prices, Perry’s overwhelmingly black
audience must be getting something more out of
his movies than positive representation and
cliché humor, as Robinson suggests.
Review: Using Sources Right!
• ALWAYS enclose words that are not your own in
quotes.
• ALWAYS make a quote the part of your own
sentence.
• ALWAYS have an author or article name and
page number in parentheses after the quote.
• ALWAYS give credit to authors whose ideas you
use, even if you are not quoting them directly.
• ALWAYS make sure that the quote is sufficiently
introduced and in context.
Annotated Bibliography
The Annotated Bibliography will be comprised of at least 5
sources in MLA works cited format.
• This means that you will have a correctly formatted
citation for 5 sources you have found in your research.
• I have provided you with resources for the most common
forms of citations, but you may have to look up some on
your own.
• Your textbook , The Little Seagull Handbook is an excellent
resource, as are websites like the OWL at Perdue and YouTube.
How the Annotated Bibliography is DIFFERENT than
a regular Works Cited page:
• The difference? Annotations! (notes on each source)
• Beneath each MLA citation on your works cited
page, you need to write a short paragraph that
briefly does the following 4 things:
• Summarizes the source
• Discusses where/how you found the source
• Gives the reasons the source is credible/reputable
• Explains how it will be relevant to your topic and useful in your
paper.
Example:
Booker, Joe. “Homelessness in LA: A Growing Trend”, Trends in
Society Journal. 12.2.(2006): 5-6. Print.
This article discusses how homelessness has increased by 50% in the
Los Angeles area over the past 5 years, and how factors such as mental
illness, economics, and racist and classist zoning of houses and
apartments has affected these numbers. I found this argument using
the Lexis-Nexis search engine, accessed through CSUN Oviatt Library.
I searched for “homelessness in Los Angeles” and found this article
after looking through my search results. It is a peer-reviewed article
from a respected journal, so I knew it was both academic and
trustworthy. This article will be useful to my essay because it provides
some useful statistics that I will cite as support when I discuss
homelessness as a persistent problem in our society that shows the
growing gap between the very rich and the very poor. I will then
connect this to the huge gap between the wealthy Capitol citizens and
the impoverished workers who live in the districts, and discuss how The
Hunger Games can be seen as commentary on the wealth gap in our
own society.
Due Tuesday:
• Tuesday, May 12
Topics: Discuss Building a Strong Thesis. Discuss
Planning Organization/Structure.
• Due:
• Annotated Bibliography – upload to turnitin.