21st-Century Communication: What Students Need to Know About Citation

Communication is without a doubt an important 21st-century skill. Likewise, there is no doubt that students of today have more information at their fingertips than at any time in history. But the challenge for teachers is in helping students to effectively convey all of that information when they communicate their ideas. One of the best ways to do this is by focusing on citation.

I have to admit that while I now see my argument essay unit as one of the most successful and engaging units I teach, for years I saw research papers as boring requirements, and the citation lesson as the worst part of the whole unit. Students would sit passively while I explained where the parenthesis should go, what should be capitalized, and how to write the page number to follow MLA format. When they turned in their final drafts, they would get just about everything wrong. It was frustrating, to say the least.

And then one day, I was reading an online article for my own research, and I started to think back on my days in graduate school. One of my tricks when researching was to find general articles, and whenever they referred to a more specific piece of information, I would quickly check out the bibliography so that I could seek out those texts to further my own research. Now, rather than going to the card catalog and wandering the basement of a university library to find those sources, I can quickly click on an embedded link to learn more. But the idea is the same.

Citation has a purpose: Writers cite their sources as a way of helping others to read more about the topics that interest them. When you cite your sources, you are providing a map for fellow researchers.

So I started explaining to my students why they needed to cite their sources. Students caught on, and when they stopped seeing citation as a way for teachers to catch them if they cheated and started to see it as a way to help their readers, they started to care more about the details.

As I also started to care more about teaching citation, I began breaking down my students’ writing to find common mistakes to tackle in a focused lesson. I noticed three main issues with the way that they were incorporating evidence into their arguments:

1. They listed quotes without enough explanation. It seems that often students think that the facts or figures speak for themselves, but a simple list is actually not the same as a convincing argument.

2. They tended to quote too often. Since they were not confident in their writing skills, they depended on the experts too much rather than paraphrasing information so that they could write their own argument in their own voice.  

3.  

   Their citation was awkward. Students might be writing a passionate and convincing argument when all of a sudden they would stop to list the article title, publication, and date of their information. Or they would have complicated footnotes or endnotes. Listing all that information was required, but it didn't make for good writing.

I focused in on those elements with my classes and assigned my students to examine published writers from real newspapers, magazines, and journals, and the way that they incorporate evidence into their arguments. When they read these mentor texts, they started to notice a few common techniques that really helped them work on their issues.

Before even providing a piece of evidence, good writers tell a reader everything they’ll need to know about the source.

They explain why a reader should care about what they are about to read and explain why the source of the evidence is one that the reader can trust and respect. In addition, they frequently list everything needed to find that source if readers want to read further. Including this much information before even providing the evidence was a little tricky at first, but with some practice, students quickly caught on to this style of argument writing. Often, they didn't even have to give a parenthetical citation when they used this format.

In the published articles that we read, the vast majority of the evidence was given to the reader in a paraphrase.

By explaining the facts or figures in their own words, writers were able to maintain an engaging and consistent voice in their piece. This was also a bit confusing for students at first—why should they re-write what someone else has already said? However, when they noticed how this format made a complicated argument easier to follow, they quickly adopted this technique.

Since everything we read had been published online, all of the sources were included in an embedded link rather than a works cited or bibliography.

While it is not an option for all students, learning how to insert embedded links is a great way for students to make their writing reflect what they are actually reading. Chances are that if they ever do write research-based writing for an authentic audience, they will be publishing online and not in print form. This is much more streamlined than a clunky parenthesis in the middle of the argument and also helped students to be more consistent with their voice.

We worked to incorporate these techniques and strategies in their research papers. They still messed up a comma or parenthesis from time to time, but their voices were stronger and arguments more organized, focused, and convincing.

Christina Gil was a high-school English teacher for sixteen years, but she recently left the classroom to follow a dream and move with her family to an ecovillage in rural Missouri. She believes that teaching creative writing helps students excel on standardized tests, that deeply analyzing and unpacking a poem is a fabulous way to spend an hour or so, and that Shakespeare is always better with sound effects. When she is not hauling water to her tiny home, she can be found homeschooling her two kids or meeting with her neighbors about the best way to run their village.