Beginnings, Fall 2013
Integrating Sources into Your Writing at the Paragraph Level
When integrating an author’s ideas into your own writing, you can use the PIE system to ensure
that the ideas blend in smoothly. You generally don’t want to start a paragraph or end a
paragraph with a quotation or paraphrased idea; instead, you want to sandwich it between your
own ideas. Make sure there is a reason you’re using an author’s idea at that particular place in
the essay. It should belong there and support your point(s).
Point:
Introduce the point you want to make in that section of the paper. A point is like
a mini-assertion. This is your idea in your words.
Illustration:
Use a direct quotation or paraphrased idea to illustrate and support that point. This
is the author’s idea. (For an essay that combines text and narrative, your
illustration may also be from your own experience.)
Explanation: Explain why the illustration is significant and how it relates to your point (and
possibly the overall thesis).
Here’s an example of a body paragraph for Essay #1:
The mode of delivery for Sociology 101 was lecture, so every day, 400 other students and
I would fill the auditorium to listen to the professor discuss (via a microphone) the latest
sociological concept. This lecture format aligns with Freire’s description of the banking concept
as a “narrative” form of teaching and learning in which the teacher is a “narrating Subject” and
the students are “patient, listening objects” (71). It seems ironic now that I was learning about
concepts such as privilege and oppression through a teaching method which Freire would
describe as “well suited to the purposes of the oppressors” (76). As Freire explains, “The more
students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical
consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that
world” (73).We were not able to ask questions, to wrestle with the information as we were
absorbing it, or to learn from anyone other than the teacher. The structure of this course did not
encourage us to use this information beyond simply regurgitating it for a multiple choice test.
Integrating Sources into Your Writing at the Sentence Level
1. Use signal phrases or integrate the quote into the wording of your own sentence.
As Paulo Freire argues, “Education is suffering from a narration sickness” (71).
Paulo Freire argues that “Education is suffering from a narration sickness” (71).
2. Use brackets if you change something or add something to the quotation.
Freire claims “Hence, [problem-posing education] corresponds to the historical nature of
human kind” (84).
3. Use ellipses (three spaced periods) when you leave out words (but don’t overuse them).
Make sure that the sentence is still grammatically correct and retains its meaning.
Freire asserts about students that “In problem-posing education. . . they come to see the
world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation” (83).
4. Indent long quotations (more than four lines) ten spaces. Introduce indented quotations with
a complete sentence followed by a colon. Note that quotation marks are not used and the
parenthetical citation goes outside the period.
Freire lists some key characteristics of problem-posing education:
[It] is revolutionary futurity. Hence it is prophetic (and, as such, hopeful). Hence, it
corresponds to the historical nature of humankind. Hence, it affirms women and men
as beings who transcend themselves, who move forward and look ahead, for whom
immobility represents a fatal threat, for whom looking at the past must only be a
means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more
wisely build the future. (84)
5. Use correct punctuation when quoting a quote.
When discussing education as a praxis, Freire says, “In order to be, it must become. Its
‘duration’ (in the Bergsonian meaning of the word) is found in the interplay of the
opposites permanence and change” (84).
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A final humorous example of the manipulation of ellipses:
Original: The film “will delight no one and appeal to the intelligence of invertebrates only, but
not average viewers.”
With ellipsis: The film “will delight. . . and appeal to the intelligence of. . .average viewers.”