HKU SPACE Community College
English for Academic Purposes II
Lecture 3: Annotated Bibliography / DO
Producing an Annotated Bibliography (APA style)
One way to organize and evaluate secondary research for your assignments is to produce an annotated
bibliography. Each entry consists of a bibliographic entry followed by an annotation, which is a summary outlining
the nature of the work.
The following sample was written by an EAP II student on her group’s topic: “Hong Kong Youth’s perceptions
towards the treatment of domestic helpers in Hong Kong”. Note that:

the references chosen by the student are authoritative, and closely related to the topic;

bibliographic entries follow the APA referencing style;

the entries are in alphabetical order, not numbered or bullet-pointed;

indentations of four to five spaces appear after the first line of the bibliographic entry;

reporting verbs are in the past simple tense, or the present perfect tense;

the student has capitalised only the first letter of the first word of a title and subtitle, the first word after a
colon in the title, and proper nouns.
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Mok, R. (2008). Foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong: Towards equality of rights. Queensland Law
Student Review, 1(2), 114-115. Retrieved from http://www.law.uq.edu.au/articles/qlsr/Mok-FDHin-HKG.pdf
In this article, Mok drew attention to the methods the government could adopt in order to maintain
the rights of foreign domestic helpers (FDHs) in Hong Kong. The writer proposed stricter
punishments to be imposed on people who exploit helpers so that migrant workers can have more
confidence in the legal system. Furthermore, the author called for improvement in legislation,
particularly through the termination of the two week rule as well as expanding the scope of
protection of rights. The importance of the government and NGOs to work side by side is
highlighted to further advance the help available to FDHs. Finally, the author heavily emphasized
the need to increase the knowledge of helpers regarding their rights, and he provided details of
advisory bodies they can approach for help. He holds that the public should also be regularly
educated against prejudicial treatment and to value domestic helpers.
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Tan, G.S.C. (2000). Why rights are not enjoyed: The case of foreign domestic helpers. Hong Kong Law
Journal, 30(3), 359-360. Retrieved from
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8q32z42lzqm7ds4/Academic%20Paper%20-%202000%20%20The%20Case%20of%20Foreign%20Domestic%20Helpers%2C%20Tan%2C%20Carol%20G.
%20S.%2C%20HK%20Law%20Journal..pdf?dl=0#
The writer discussed lack of sympathy as one of the prominent justifications for the inability of
foreign domestic helpers to retain their rights. She outlined the inadequate demands and the hike in
complaints against helpers in order to support her claim. According to the article, such
inconsiderate behaviour stemmed from the fact that an increasing number of workers were gaining
an improved understanding of the law. This in turn has driven employers to favor nationalities with
no knowledge of their rights over those that do. Thus, the hiring benchmark of domestic helpers
was based on how submissive they were. Tan called for reform of legislation regarding domestic
helpers in order to aid the changing such mindset of employers and she firmly believed that without
amendments in the law, foreign domestic helpers would not be able to exert their rights.
Yip, C. (2014, Feb, 3). Hong Kong must address the social costs of hiring domestic helpers. South China
Morning Post. Retrieved from http://www.scmp.com/comment/insightopinion/article/1419267/hong-kong-must-address-social-costs-hiring-domestic-helpers
The article examined the budding issues arising from the increasing number of foreign domestic
helpers in Hong Kong: the lack of job opportunities for locals in the domestic helper market; and
the unfavorable consequences on children of both sides. The writer maintained that these
disadvantages were overlooked due to the substantial amount of economic gains for both Hong
Kong and the countries that the helpers migrated from. Yip suggested that the government should
play an active role in tackling both problems. He used the example of Taiwan to explain how
employers could be guided to opt for local helpers. According to the article, the government needed
to provide more facilities for families in order to nurture healthy and strong relationships between
parents and children. He urged the protection of domestic helpers and emphasized the need for
mutual respect between both parties.
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Writing an Annotation
Step 1: Read the excerpt and underline the main ideas and key supporting details. List this information on a
separate page.
Step 2: Paraphrase the information.
Step 3: Connect the individual sentences together to form a paragraph. Check for cohesion and coherence.
Practice
Find synonyms from the excerpt below (Harrison, 2015) for the vocab items given in the table on page 4. What
words/phrases can replace the original language in the text? Try to come up with as many answers as you can for
each item in the list.
Without a doubt, societal influences - both inside and outside the family - cause
many differences to develop between the way boys and girls behave. Inside the
family, boys learn to be men by watching and copying their fathers, and girls learn
to be women by watching and copying their mothers. However, not all differences
are caused by societal influences. Some are due to the differences in physiology of
the brain. For example, more men than women are left-handed, which means that
the right side of men's brains are dominant because the right side of the brain
controls the left side of the body. Right brain people generally have better
reasoning abilities, whereas left brain people have better spoken language skills.
This may explain why girls are better at language than boys. For both men and
women, the language centre is on the left side of the brain. However, girls not only
begin speaking earlier than boys, they also speak more clearly and develop larger
vocabularies. In addition, more boys than girls stutter and have trouble learning to
read. Boys' difficulty with language may be the result of their right-brain
dominance.
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“Mr. Osborne, may I be excused? My brain is full.”
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Original
Synonym
Without a doubt
develop
behave
copying
however
differences
physiology
controls
generally
spoken language skills
Optional Activity
Paraphrase the text, refer to instructions on the top of P.3.
You may like to begin your annotation with one of the following forms:
•
The writer/author
•
Harrison
reports / puts forth / postulates / contends / argues / asserts / mentions /
examines / believes / theorises / purports, states / (etc.)
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