Citations in Academic Writing of Undergraduate Students of National University of Lesotho (original) (raw)

An Analysis on the Undergraduate Students' Citing Habit in Thesis Writing

Langua: Journal of Linguistics, Literature, and Language Education, 2022

This study aims to investigate the students' habit in writing citation in their thesis. As a scientific paper, a thesis should be formatted according to the style allowed or accepted by the institution. By involving 83 thesis written by undergraduate students on an English program of a college in North Maluku, this descriptive qualitative study revealed that most students used APA style as required by the college. Moreover, the students made many mistakes in writing citation ranged from non-italicized book title to non-recorded quotation. Data from interview revealed that the students made these mistakes due to some factors that we assumed the causes of the students' citing habit. Overall, plagiarism has been noted as the main factor responsible for those mistakes.

Students' Knowledge in Citing Sources at St. Paul University

International Journal of Current Science Research and Review, 2023

This study aimed to assess the knowledge level of college students on citing sources at St. Paul University. Citing sources can solidify claims and make a research paper credible. Failing to credit the ideas of others is a form of plagiarism, which was a common problem among students in the past until today. A descriptive quantitative survey method was used in this study wherein one hundred sixty (160) college students at St. Paul University participated in a test comprising a researcher-made questionnaire based on the 7th edition of the American Psychological Association's (APA) Manual. The findings revealed that the students were proficient in both in-text citations and referencing assessments. Thus, the students have gained learning and knowledge in the activities conducted by the University's Library and Research departments pertaining on how to correctly cite sources following the APA 7th edition style. It is recommended to library and information science practitioners to sustain initiatives that enhance the students' knowledge in crediting sources by providing them with series of orientations and training workshops on APA 7th edition. Moreover, collaboration between the library and research offices of educational institutions is encouraged to improve students' citation and referencing skills. It is anticipated that the outcome of this collaboration will reduce errors on proper citations and rather promote respect to others' intellectual properties and contribution. Practitioners should also integrate the fundamental concept of crediting sources into classes to ensure that students understand the significance of acknowledging works as they support their own ideas.

Citation practices of L2 university students in first-year writing: Form, function, and stance

Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2018

This study reports findings of an analysis of the citation practices of L2 undergraduate students in the context of first-year writing (FYW). Data consist of a corpus of 100 source-based research papers written by L2 students in a FYW course. Taking a multi-perspective analytical approach, we examine L2 undergraduate students' citation practices in terms of surface forms, rhetorical functions, and writer stance. Results indicate that L2 students use a restricted range of reporting structures, and they primarily use sources for attribution function to display their knowledge of the topics. Furthermore, as opposed to taking a strong positive or negative position, the findings show that L2 student writers mainly adopt a non-committal stance by merely acknowledging or distancing themselves from cited materials, suggesting that L2 students are inclined to show deference to the perceived authority of published sources. We conclude with pedagogical options for enhancing L2 university students' citation practices.

Types and functions of citations in Master’s theses across disciplines and languages

Discourse and Interaction

Citation is an essential and common feature of academic writing and is used by academicwriters to achieve different purposes. This study investigated disciplinary variationsin terms of citation practices in the genre of Master’s theses with a specific focus ondiscussions. To this end, sixty discussions produced by MA/MS students of two keyuniversities in Iran from both hard and soft disciplines were analyzed in terms of citationtypes and functions. The medium of writing whether English or Persian was also takeninto account for its probable influence on the employed citation practices. The resultsrevealed that integral citations were used more frequently by writers in soft knowledgefields, allowing them to make evaluations, whereas non-integral citations were mostlyused by hard discipline writers. As for rhetorical functions, Support and Comparison werethe dominant functions in these text types. However, there existed subtle differences bothin the degree and the way these writers dra...