Dr. Kerry Walk <kwalk@princeton.edu>
Exercises on Writing with Sources*
Integrating Sources
• Spot the Errors in Integrating Sources: Students having read the relevant section of a
writing manual, you compose a page of academic writing that does many things wrong, large and
small—setting up, punctuating, etc. Students (on the spot or as homework before class) spot the
errors and say how to fix them.
Properly Documenting Sources
• Spot the Errors in Acknowledging Sources: Same as above, but the errors in the piece you
compose are more serious—are plagiarism. You provide the original source or sources, or at
least the relevant pages from them. Or, in a “Supply Citations and Quotations” version, you
provide a passage empty of citations, and the source passages, and students fill in citations and
quotation marks as needed.
• Spot the Errors in Listing References: Same as above, but you give students a short, faulty
reference list (works cited, notes, etc.), and they note errors and fix them using a writing manual.
• Hands On Reference List: Students examine and identify different types of sources (article in
a journal, essay in a collection, etc.), then use a writing manual to determine the correct form in
which the bibliographical information should appear in a works cited or reference list. Use this
exercise to discuss different styles of documentation, and the pros and cons of adhering to them
as closely as possible.
• Plagiarism or Not? Give students a series of short passages (1-4 sentences long)—most faulty,
some not—along with the relevant source passage or passages. These are either different
versions of the same passage, excerpts from different student drafts, or just different instances
showing how small the difference can be between proper and improper acknowledgment.
• Repairing Plagiarism: Provide students with two passages, one of which plagiarizes the other.
They rewrite the offending passage to make it legal. You copy several of the rewrites for class
discussion, asking students to vote on which is best and why (both for legality and gracefulness).
• Deliberate Plagiarizing: Assign students to write a page or so in which they plagiarize
deliberately and craftily—either from an essay on one of the works you are discussing in class
(and they may be writing about already) or from an essay by another student. They also provide a
key to their artful plagiarizing, commenting on what they did, though you present samples to the
class without the key.
Locating and Evaluating Sources
*These exercises were devised, for the most part, by preceptors in Harvard’s Expository Writing Program.
Dr. Kerry Walk <kwalk@princeton.edu>
• Evaluating Sources: Students develop criteria for evaluating sources by comparing two
passages by different authors (one credible, one not) on the same topic.
• Evaluating Internet Sources: This exercise comes from teachers at Minnesota State
University, Mankato <www.lme.mankato.msus.edu/class/629/Cred.HTML>. Students read an
article or two about evaluating Internet sources (e.g., “Thinking Critically About World Wide
Web Resources,” by Esther Grassian of the UCLA College Library, and available on the MSU
website), then visit and evaluate a few sites, at least some of which should lack credibility. See
also these useful websites for information about evaluating Internet sources:
<www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/research/webeval.html> and
<www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/college/instruct/web/critical.htm>.
• Follow Up a Citation: Having read and discussed an academic essay, students go to the library
and actually look up one or two of the pieces cited in the essay, to see how it has been used, how
fairly, what the author chose to include and leave out, etc. Students report back on what they
find. Can be set up using citations that you know to be problematic—though many are
anyway!—or to a particularly interesting essay.
Using Sources to Advance an Argument
• Before and After a Source: To introduce what sources do, start small: have students discuss
or write about a text or topic in or for class, then introduce a brief source item (an opinion, fact,
theory, comparable version) and have them discuss or write again, in light of or responding to the
source. Discuss what the source made happen in their thinking or articulating. (If the source is a
claim or opinion, students can respond on both sides of it.)
• Reading for Form and Function: Students read an academic essay, mark where the writer
uses a source and note which of several possible forms it takes (mention, summary, quotation,
etc.), and most important try to describe what the source does for the argument in each case—e.g.
establish motive, provide evidence, fill in background, supply keyterms, set up a debate or
counter-argument. They also note particularly effective or ineffective uses of sources. In class
discussion you arrive at some categories of function and of good/bad use. Or, ask students to
choose out three different uses of a source to comment on. Also good as a draft workshop
activity.
• Claim, Evidence, Analysis: Students read one or more passages of academic writing and mark
in the margin where claim, evidence, and analysis occur, looking to see that they all do—e.g. that
there’s not a claim without evidence, and not evidence, quoted or summarized, without analysis.
• Critical Reading of Source-Based Writing: Discuss published examples of source use and
misuse—e.g., a passage that reviews sources, then builds on their insights; that presents a kneejerk response to a source; that contains an apparently deliberate misrepresentation of a source in
the interests of advancing an argument; that features an over-abundance of references to sources;
that presents an unattributed but real-sounding argument, which the author then argues against
(the “straw person” fallacy).