Immersing Students into the World of Academic English

Summary

The following is a summary of an article written by Christine Tardy for English Teaching Forum. Its title is Writing for the world: Wikipedia as an introduction to academic writing. This article deals mainly with how to guide students into the production of academic writing, using Wikipedia as a tool for such aim. For students’ production to be accepted into Wikipedia website, Tardy (2010) explains what requirements and steps must be fulfilled.

To start with, according to the author, it is essential to raise awareness in learners of the importance of avoiding plagiarism. Writers should be able to paraphrase, summarize, cite and quote in order to successfully write in an acceptable academic style. Moreover, the academic style requires from the students knowledge of the appropriate genres, styles, register and a high level of expertise on the topics dealt with in papers. In addition, for written pieces to be accepted into Wikipedia, not only knowledge is required, but also reliable sources of information.

Furthermore, the writer lists the steps to be followed in order to successfully write in academic English and, thus, to have the written piece admitted into Wikipedia. First of all, students should start by examining Wikipedia to have an idea of what is expected from them. Then, gathering information follows with outlining and paraphrasing so as to organize what is to be written together with the sources where information was taken from. The last steps are concerned with the writing process. Students should be encouraged to draft, revise, format sources, and polish, being revising and polishing better achieved, as the writer suggests, if they are carried out by peer review. Finally, publishing takes place.

To conclude, the author aims at providing the teacher with tools to immerse students into the community of academic English. Students’ productions are accepted into Wikipedia as long as they meet the requirements of academic style. Therefore, as Tardy (2010) asserts, writing to publish in Wikipedia gives students a real purpose and real audience to use academic English, which is assumed to help students gain valuable learning.

 

 

 

 Reference

Tardy, C. M. (2010). Writing for the world: Wikipedia as an introduction to academic writing. English Teaching Forum, 1, 12-27. Retrieved from http://exchanges.state.gov/englishteaching/forum/archives/docs/10-48-1-c.pdf

 

 

Citing Following the APA Style

Plagiarism is considered immoral, and, thus, when mentioning other people’s thoughts, they must be cited. For this reason, rules and procedures for citing have been established by the American Psychological Association (APA), among other associations. For this analytical essay, a paper by Dalvit et al, 2005, has been analysed to study the usage of the APA style. The results reveal that, even though not all these rules are applied, the authors follow many of them.

Concerning the use of in-text citations, it can be stated that they are adequate regarding APA manual. For instance, when the authors paraphrase Boughey’s words they write, “As far as language problems are concerned, the current approach (…) is mainly informed by studies in the Humanities (Boughey, 2002),” (p.73) including the author’s last name and year. Similarly, when citing a group or institution, its name and year of publication are included.  Regarding signal phrases, for example in “According to Heugh (2002), little has changed since the end of Apartheid,” (p.72) the authors include only the year of publication in the parenthesis, as suggested by the APA.

As regards the reference list, it shows certain inconsistencies concerning what has been established by the APA. To start with, the layout chosen does not completely coincide with the APA style. For instance, the reference list is not on a separate page, the title “reference” is not centered in the first line, the list is not double-spaced, and, in the titles, not only the first words are capitalised. Furthermore, they use the word “and” instead of “&” when two or more authors are mentioned. For example, in the reference “ Halliday, M.A.K. and Martin, J.R. (1993). Writing Science: Literacy and Discursive Power. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,” (p.75) the use of capital letters and the use of the word “and” can be appreciated.

To conclude, it can be said that APA rules and procedures for citing have influenced the authors of the analysed paper up to a certain extent. The influence is mainly seen in the in-texts citations. However, concerning the reference list, its style does not completely coincide with the APA style. This incongruence can especially be seen in the layout and in the capitalization of titles of the reference list.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reference

Dalvit, L., Murray, S. and Terzoli, A. (2005). Providing increased access to English L2 students of computer science at a South African University. US-China Education Review, Sep. 2005, Vol. 2 (9)

 

University of Minnesota Center for Writing. (n.d.) Quicktips: APA documentation style: Reference list. University of Minnesota: Student Writing Support. doi: 612.625.1893

 

University of Minnesota Center for Writing. (n.d.). Quicktips: APA documentation style: In-text citations. University of Minnesota: Student Writing Support. doi: 612.625.1893



 

 

Dear colleagues,
                          My name is Maria Rita Barbalarga. I am from Azul, Bs. As. I am 27 years old and I have been a teacher for 7 years. I studied at Instituto Superior de Formación Docente San José, in Tandil.
                           I have always been eager to learn and grow professionally. For that reason, I enrolled to study at CAECE University. When faced with studying academic English, we were invited to open a blog where we could work collectively sharing our learning experiences. Hence, this blog deals specially with EAP and ESL.

                            Please, as learning collaboratively is the main aim, feel free to leave any comment you may consider necessary, I will be anxiously waiting for them. I hope we all enjoy this fruitful experience. Working together, as the huge team we are from now onwards, will surely be one of my unforgettable experiences.
                            Now, I can only say that I will be looking forward to reading from you!

                            Kind regards,
                           
                          Maria Rita Barbalarga