Academic Writing
Citing sources: Test
1. Reporting 1
Read the following text. Report the author’s work – remember to use your own words and cite your source correctly. Show your answers to someone. If you are in one of my classes, e-mail the report to me.
EARLY HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN ATOMIC SPECTRA Spectroscopy as a field of experimental and theoretical research has contributed much to our knowledge concerning the physical nature of things – knowledge not only of our own earth but of the sun, of inter-stellar space, and of the distant stars. It may rightly be said that spectroscopy had its beginning in the year 1666 with the discovery by Sir Isaac Newton that different coloured rays of light when allowed to pass through a prism were refracted at different angles. The experiments that Newton actually carried out are well known to everyone. Sunlight confined to a small pencil of rays by means of a hole in a diaphragm and then allowed to pass through a prism was spread out into a beautiful band of colour. Although it was known to the ancients that clear crystals when placed in direct sunlight gave rise to spectral arrays, it remained for Newton to show that the colours did not originate in the crystal but were the necessary ingredients that go to make up sunlight. With a lens in the optical path the band of colours falling on a screen became a series of coloured images of the hole in the diaphragm. This band Newton called a spectrum. Had Newton used a narrow slit as a secondary source of light and examined carefully its image in the spectrum, he probably would have discovered, as did Wollaston and Fraunhofer more than one hundred years later, the dark absorption lines of the sun’s spectrum. Fraunhofer took it upon himself to map out several hundred of the newly found lines of the solar spectrum and labelled eight of the most prominent ones by the first eight letters of the alphabet. These lines are now known as the Fraunhofer lines. From Intoduction to atomic spectra by Harvey Elliott White, published by McGraw-Hill in New York in 1934. This extract is from page 1. |
2. Reporting 2
Go to your library and find an interesting textbook. Choose a useful paragraph and report the author’s work – remember to use your own words and cite your source correctly. Show your answers to someone. If you are in one of my classes, e-mail the report to me.
3. Direct quotation 1
Read the following text and quote one aspect of the author’s work. Remember to cite your source correctly. Show your answers to someone. If you are in one of my classes, e-mail the quotation to me.
I am sitting on a friend’s terrace. Close by is Lisa, 16 months old, a bright and bold child. She has invented a very varied pseudo speech which she uses all the time. Some sounds she says over and over again, as if she meant something by them. She likes to touch and handle things, and is surprisingly dexterous; she can fit screws and similar small objects into the holes meant for them. Can it be that little children are less clumsy than we have always supposed? One of Lisa’s favourite games is to take my ball-point pen out of my pocket, take the top off, and then put it on again. This takes some skill. She never tires of the game; if she sees me with the pen in my pocket, she lets me know right away that she wants it. There is no putting her off. She is stubborn, and if I pretend – which is a lie – not to know what she wants, she makes a scene. The trick, when I know I will need to use my pen, is to have an extra one hidden in a pocket. The other day she was playing on the piano, hitting out more or less at random with both hands, pleased to be working the machine, and making such an interesting noise. Curious to see whether she would imitate me, I bounced up and down the key-board with my index finger. She watched, then did the same. From How children learn by John Holt, published in London by Pelican. The book was published in 1967 and the extract is from page 13. |
4. Direct quotation 2
Go to your library and find an interesting textbook. Choose a useful paragraph and quote the author’s work. Remember to cite your source correctly. Show your answers to someone. If you are in one of my classes, e-mail the quotation to me.
5. Reporting with quotation
Read the following text and report Pease’s ideas in about 70 words. Include a short quotation. Remember to use your own words except when quoting. Show your answers to someone. If you are in one of my classes, e-mail your text to me.
PERCEPTIVENESS, INTUITION AND HUNCHES From a technical point of view, whenever we call someone ‘perceptive’ or ‘intuitive’, we are referring to his or her ability to read another person’s non-verbal cues and to compare these cues with verbal signals. In other words, when we say that we have a ‘hunch’ or ‘gut feeling’ that someone has told us a lie, we really mean that their body language and their spoken words do not agree. This is also what speakers call audience awareness, or relating to a group. For example, if the audience were sitting back in their seats with chins down and arms crossed on their chest, a ‘perceptive’ speaker would get a hunch or feeling that his delivery was not going across. He would become aware that he needed to take a different approach to gain audience involvement. Likewise, a speaker who was not ‘perceptive’ would blunder on regardless. Women are generally more perceptive than men, and this fact has given rise to what is commonly referred to as ‘women’s intuition’. Women have an innate ability to pick up and decipher non-verbal signals, as well as having an accurate eye for small details. This is why few husbands can lie to their wives and get away with it and why, conversely, most women can pull the wool over a man’s eyes without his realising it. This female intuition is particularly evident in women who have brought up young children. For the first few years, the mother relies solely on the non-verbal channel to communicate with the child and this is believed to be the reason why women often become more perceptive negotiators than men. From Body Language by Allan Pease, London: Sheldon Press, 1984, page 10. |
6. Reporting with quotation 2
Go to your library and find an interesting textbook. Choose a useful paragraph and report the author’s work. Include a short quotation. Remember to use your own words except when quoting and to cite your source correctly. Show your answers to someone. If you are in one of my classes, e-mail the quotation to me.