APA and MLA: PROVIDING REFERENCES IN DIFFERENT STYLES

(Image taken from Flickr - by Linda Cronin)

Referencing styles are not very easy to use, probably because we are not used to writing many academic papers. Though both of the websites suggested in E-tivity 6 were clear, I still feel unsure about how to properly write a reference. In my opinion, a good university student should have no doubts about how to quote other people’s works at the end of their five-year course, but I think that the majority of Italian students still face problems in dealing with citations.
Exploring APA and MLA websites, I learned that all ‘important’ words (verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives and adverbs) must be capitalised when quoting (this was a question I have been asking myself for a long time). Moreover, I found out that in the format by APA if you quote longer works you should either use italics or underline the title, but if you want to cite a shorter work, you are supposed to use quotation marks. Honestly speaking, I find this difference quite silly. Yet, if this is the general rule, I will do my best to follow it! Personally, I prefer using italics rather than underlining, but surprise surprise... according to MLA style the contrary would be much better. I agree with Modern Language Association when it suggests people use “Work Cited” or “Annotated Works Cited” instead of the more generic “Bibliography”. I finally learned that indentation of a long quotation must be five spaces from the left margin and the double-spacing should be maintained. Needless to say, APA and MLA are quite different: here below I would like to mention just a couple of examples. MLA thinks that one should not abbreviate the name of the authors, while according to APA it is preferable to write the authors’ surnames first and then their names’ initials. Also the right place for the year of publication of a work is different: while according to MLA it must be written at the very end, in the APA style it should be inserted after the author’s name. Last but not least, the use of ‘&’ before the last author’s name is suggested by the Modern Language Association, but the American Psychological Association believes that in such a case an ‘and’ would be definitely more appropriate.
In my B.A. thesis I followed my supervisor’s advice and used the single-spacing for long quotation and, as far as indentation was concerned, I did it according to my own taste. I did not used ampersands because I feel that they are more used in commercial contexts, rather than in academic ones. All things considered, the style I used was a mix of APA and MLA styles.

In conclusion, I believe that we should practice a lot not just before our final dissertation, but also on other occasions. Writing academic pieces of work is not an easy task at all and, beside being careful, you also have to carve our plenty of time in order to come up with a clear and precise work. I hope to learn how to quote correctly as soon as possible.

HOW TO MAKE POSTS READABLE. A COMMENT ON AN ACADEMIC ARTICLE BY GIMENEZ

Writing well is not an easy task at all. I can read extensive articles, even dealing with specific or technical issues, yet I find it difficult to write a good text. It is common knowledge that a text (posts, e-mails, academic articles etc.) must have an introduction, a well-developed body supporting your ideas and has to round up with an appropriate conclusion. Actually what happens most of the time is that I want to convey so many things that either I get lost or I write pages and pages. In this post I will try to summarize some general opinions about what “readable” means, analysing a scholarly article I found on the Web.

Last week in class we discussed how to make posts readable. We all agreed on the fact that cohesion and coherence are two essential elements. Thanks to a neatly laid out text that avoids redundant repetition and uses synonyms or pronouns when possible, these two goals can be easily achieved. Needless to say, structure and links in the right place are also important. Generally speaking, short sentences are preferable to longer and more complex ones, even if Italians tend to be long-winded. English is widely recognized as a writer-responsible language: this means that the writer has to do their best to make a text logical and easy to follow. Furthermore, one should not forget that font, colour and paragraphs are visual tools that have to be used properly. If the background is black, you cannot write your text in dark grey, for example. Though these might seem just trivial details, it is true that readers can be discouraged to read what you wrote if the font is too small or if there are no paragraphs at all.

“Business e-mail communication: some emerging tendencies in register” (url no longer available) is an article written by Julio C. Gimenez in 2000. Its structure is really very clear since the article follows the hourglass structure. In the introduction, which is divided into three paragraphs, Gimenez explains the aims of his research after having provided a short background on the electronic communication. Of course the article has a logical flow of ideas: first of all the author tells about the origins of e-mail, then he analyses the electronic discourse focussing on register, style and contextual aspects of e-mails. For each aspect he provides statistical data (diagrams, data, and real example taken from a corpus of e-mails). These make the article trustworthy and support Gimenez’s statements. Before concluding the article, Gimenez draws his attention to the main differences between business e-mail and commercial letters and to the implications for teaching. The conclusion sums up the most important evidence and findings of the article and mentions the limitations of his research. The text is undoubtely cohesive thanks to the use of pronouns, repetitions and demonstratives:

• “The present paper attempts to investigate whether the spoken nature of e-mail messages has already started to affect business communication. It looks at... This paper also considers some of the implications...”;
• “The language of e-mail messages, as asserted in Fig1 contains... It also shows a liking for... In the commercial e-mails analysed, this is illustrated by examples, such as...”

The writing is easy to understand: sentences are short (generally no more than three-lines long) and do not have too many subordinates. The terms used are not specialistic, the style is formal but clear. The text’s assumed audience is people interested in linguistic and in this kind of texts. As a matter of fact, Gimenez in the introduction mentions previous research and specialized journals (ESP Journal and English Today). As a consequence, the author takes for granted that the readers already know what register means and do not explain the concept.

In conclusion, writing academic papers does not mean writing complex sentences difficult to understand. Language does not need to be august to be formal and it is better if we keep things simple and straightforward rather than long and obscure. I strongly believe that the pattern introduction- body- conclusion should be respected for every text and that the writer has to be concise, yet exhaustive and accurate. From now on I will try to simplify more and more in order to avoid unnecessary repetitions.

PLAGIARISM

(Flickr.com - Image by Make Studio)

There is indeed an increasing concern raised by authors and publishers regarding texts, images as well as music on the Internet and intellectual property rights (IPR) associated with them. The already existing legal frameworks which discipline the use of texts, images and, generally speaking, artistic pieces of work (both published and not) has to cope with the spread of the Internet. Establishing legal jurisdiction is sometimes difficult, as the article “As rights clash on YouTube, some music vanishes” by Tim Arango (The New York Time, 22nd March 2009) clearly state.
According to the definition given by Oxford Monolingual Dictionary, plagiarize means “to copy another person’s ideas, words or work and pretend that they are your own”. This is the reason why, as discussed in class, plagiarism is considered wrong, unethical and in the USA, it may lead dishonest students to fail an exam or - even worse - to get expelled from the University they are attending. In order to avoid plagiarism and showing respect for other people’s work, all students and anyone who publishes something must document the sources used for their work, writing a detailed and accurate bibliography/ webliography listing the references, the name of the author, the year of publication of the book/article and any other data that could be considered useful to trace the original work.


I believe that quoting pieces of others’ work is a good thing to do, since it shows that your research is based on extensive reading and you incorporated content taken from different sources. Yet, if you do not want to commit fraud, you must make explicit reference to the sources used. Paraphrasing, summarizing and, last but not least, direct quoting must be followed by a precise reference. As far as links are concerned, a good student should also mention the last visit on the Website. Personally, I prefer using parenthetical references instead of footnotes. This means that I mention the reference immediately after the quotation and then I write the complete reference at the end of the paper, in the bibliography. It seems to me that writing footnotes is more a time-consuming activity than inserting parenthetical references.


For what my blog is concerned, I use images taken from Flickr and I write below the images the name or nickname of the photographer in order to avoid copyright problems. When I quote something I make reference to the link/book/article from where I got the information. The only doubt I have is about YouTube. As a matter of fact, the article by Arango made me think that sometimes people do not respect copyright involuntary: in my opinion, adding a song as a background for a message could not be considered as plagiarism or copyright violation, since Juliet Weybret (the teacher whose video was removed from YouTube) was not using that piece of music to earn money. I am wondering if I can leave the videos I downloaded from YouTube in my blog... According to me there is nothing wrong with that, but it would be unpleasant to be fined for the violation of copyright!


In my opinion, thanks to the Internet plagiarism is becoming more and more widespread since having access to many articles and works, as well as to online books is extremely easy. This is also asserted here: “It [plagiarism] has increased with the rise of technological advances and individual access to technology. The average person has access to multiple, global sources of information, increasing opportunities for plagiarism to occur” (www.ncwiseowl.org.it/plagiarism/default.htm, last visited: 14th April 2009). Therefore, everyone should be careful and honest enough to avoid plagiarism. Being fair is only up to us!

HAPPY EASTER DAY

Easter is coming and I'd just like to say I am happy to share it with you.
Happy Easter!

How to learn English with music...

I HAVE MY OWN WAY OF LEARNING

The e-tivity we did in class last week gave me the opportunity to discuss with my peers how to critically evaluate online sources. Since on the Internet there is a lot of junk, we have to skim and scan in order to come up with serious, trustworthy and reliable articles that can suite our research purposes. We agreed on the fact that the author of the piece of writing and the reason why the article was published are two of the main questions we all should pose ourselves when using materials downloaded from the Web. In our evaluations, references, external links and layout play a great role, too. I also understood that blogs run by experts are a good starting point for our research because they provide interesting links and references; moreover, bloggers often refer to other sources enabling the reader to have an exhaustive ‘picture’ of the matter.

In the lab we dug into “personal learning environment” and I found out that there is not a single definition for this relatively new concept, since it is something strictly personal and there are not hard and fast rules. Learning is up to us and people are supposed to find strategies and tools that go beyond academic lessons in order to improve a foreign language. The process of learning is thus under the control of the learners that can choose among a wide variety of approaches and systems to improve their skills. Blogs, books as well as many websites deal with this issue and try to examine it from different viewpoints. On Delicious I shared some of the bookmarks on this topic; I think they might be useful for you, too. Unfortunately, many scholar articles that seemed to be useful and interesting for PLE are not free and all you can see is a short abstract.

On Thursday we continued our discussion about critical reading. I think that the questions we have to pose when we come across a research article are very similar to the one we posed in e-tivity 5. Since I am interested in the language of e-mails for business purposes, I looked for an article dealing with this issue and I tried to answer the ten preliminary questions.

The researcher of “Business e-mail communication: some emerging tendencies in register” is Julio C. Gimenez, an ESP instructor at Universidad Empresarial Siglo 21 in Cordoba, Argentina and has a M.A. in Teaching English as Foreign Language. When the article first appeared on the web, on 27th March 2000, he was working towards a Ph.D. By now, I think he has completed it. From the abstract I could understand that the aim of his research was to investigate the language of e-mails and see if its spoken nature has already started to affect business communication. The data collected were qualitative, since the author analysed more than 63 business e-mails and 40 business letters. The study was done on a relatively small scale since the total amount of texts analysed was 103 and the business e-mails/letters came from a single company that is not mentioned in the abstract. In the conclusion, Gimenez highlighted the fact that e-mails are becoming more and more informal and personalized, since their language is extremely flexible and, unlike for business letters, there are any ‘how tos’ and rules for e-mails (a part from some general rules called ‘netiquette’). Among the limitations of the research, the author mentioned: “The data used is too small, however, to make any firm generalisations or to conclude that business e-mail communication represents a new genre as described by Swales (1990). Besides, even if the e-mails analysed in this paper can be said to exemplify the use of e-mails in business, they were all taken from the same source and mostly sent to the same receiver, thus not allowing for a more exhaustive cross-sectional analysis of business e-mail practices”.

I choose love