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Following on from part one, welcome to our second article on why and how we need to reference in texts. Every writer has to have a purpose and an audience for their texts. The purpose and audience will determine how that text is written: the language used, the tone, and the way that the information is laid out. Now consider what this means should you be writing an academic essay, argument, or journal article. When you are writing for lectures, fellow students, or academics in general, you are expected to use a formal register (type) of language, and a formal tone. You have to avoid emotional language, and value judgments (words that carry good or bad connections). You are also expected to present your argument logically, and to persuade your reader through logic and evidence that your theory or argument is correct. Your use of referencing provides that evidence, and it avoids plagiarism.
Now, when you reference, there are two main aspects we need to consider: Firstly, you need to put the reference in your text, as you type. This is called ‘’in-text’’ referencing. You have a statement, followed by evidence. This evidence is your source referencing. To provide you with real examples, I will use the APA system. This means that I will include: the surname of the author in brackets, followed by a comma, followed by the date of the original publication. The first example below is that of a Doctoral Thesis, while the second and third examples are for journal publications:
The South African education system still does not help learners to become effective readers and writers in their early schooling years (Steinke, 2019).
In the case of two or more authors, an in-text may look like this (Steinke & Wildsmith-Cromarty, 2019).
Where you have three authors or more, it looks like this (Bassily et al., 2021).
NOTE: the full stop comes after the in-text reference, not before.
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Secondly, you need to include the full reference in a reference list that comes at the end of your text. This is where you will need to understand the various types of referencing formats that exist in more detail. Now go to the end of this post, and see the full reference list for the in-text references I provided above. Take notice how the reference for the PhD (Doctoral) thesis is formatted a little differently from that of a journal publication. To help you to understand more clearly, I have rewritten out one of the examples I used both above and in the reference list, below:
Steinke, K. (2019). Can additional training help teachers to be better teachers of reading at the foundation schooling level? The Journal of Independent Language Teaching, 2(1), pp. 37-56.
Note: the surname/s comes first, followed by the date. Then the title of the article is provided, followed by the name of the publication, followed by the volume number, the issue number (in brackets), and finally, the page numbers.
I am going to provide links here to websites that contain examples of APA and HARVARD references, (and can also generate citations for you), so that you can see and easily find examples of all the various ways of correctly formatting for different texts, such as articles, websites, theses, reports, Government documents, Presentations, and so forth. The APA citation (reference) generator is on Scribbr.com while the HARVARD option is on the MyBib.com site, where you can find citations of many different types of styles. Harvard, by the way, is very similar to APA. However, when it comes to referencing, there really is both some good news and some bad news that you need to be aware of.
Firstly, the bad news is that there are literally hundreds of types of referencing styles, all used by various academic disciplines and departments. The good news is that you will only be using one or maybe two types on your particular field of study or discipline, which means that you can become familiar with how to format your particular style of referencing that is required. My field, for example, the social sciences, uses either APA or Harvard style, whereas a hard science, such as Agriculture, may use MLA, Chicago, or Turabian.
In addition, you can always go to specific sites that will show you how to reference for various types of texts. For example, a website, a book, a journal article, and a report are all referenced differently even within the same style. Fortunately, you are not expected to know all this off-by-heart. You can use templates (set patterns that exist for how something is done or laid out) and these are readily available online for you to use.
Another tip is to make use of Endnote, RefWorks, or Mendeley Reference Manager. These are citation (referencing) packages on your computer that work with MS Word and a range of other applications. These are so great for saving time, making referencing easy, and storing your citation information. While it is the case that this type of software is expensive to buy, most universities, including the University of Mpumalanga, have an IT Department or library that has free referencing software available for students to download. These libraries also offer training in how to use these packages, so you can ask about it at your particular Institution.
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I hope these articles on referencing, both part one and part two, have helped you understand what citations are all about, and why we need to use them. If you are a new student, please don’t panic! Being inducted into (learning the ways of) doing things in an academic environment takes time, and referencing is one of those skills that you will learn as you go along. What you do need to know for now is that your references must be included in your work if you are to avoid stealing other people's work, and the crime of plagiarism.
As usual, leave your ideas and comments either below in the comments section or on our Facebook page. We are always keen to hear what you have to say. Don't forget to check out promised the reference list below.
Until next time,
All the best, from the Wordwise Team
REFERENCES:
Bassily, R., Nissim, K., Smith, A., Steinke, T., Stemmer, U., & Ullman, J. (2021). Algorithmic stability for adaptive data analysis. SIAM Journal on Computing(0), 377-405.
Steinke, K. (2019). The pedagogical content knowledge of teachers and its effect on enliterating grade three and four learners [Thesis]. North West University. https://repository-nwu-ac-za.nwulib.nwu.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10394/35997/Steinke_KJ.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Steinke, K., & Wildsmith-Cromarty, R. (2019). Securing the fort: Capturing reading pedagogy in the Foundation Phase. Per Linguam: a Journal of Language Learning, 35(3), 29-58.
Disclaimer: The reviews reflected here are only my personal opinion and do not represent the opinions of other associated parties.
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