Citations in Academic Writing of Undergraduate Students of National University of Lesotho (original) (raw)
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LANGUAGE, 2009
The present study is an attempt to provide insights into the underlying factors governing citation practices in three higher-and three lower-graded undergraduate dissertations in Education at the University of Malta. On the basis of the analysis of interview data, the study found evidence to suggest a distinction across the parameters of citation density, source type, forms of integrating report and textual voice. While all students interviewed acknowledged the importance of an adequate reference list, those producing higher-graded dissertations were more likely to make use of citations from journal articles, integrate source material into their texts using paraphrases and superimpose their textual voice. There is some evidence to suggest that two factors influencing preference across the above parameters are language competence and previous training in academic writing. The paper supports previous work documenting a relationship between citation use and dissertation grade and advocates more work on citation practices with particular reference to associated linguistic skills in the case of non-native speakers.
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.
This study investigated whether students of the School of Education at the University of Zambia were adequately prepared in referencing and citation or not. A mixed methods approach was used; both quantitative and qualitative methods were employed in this study. Self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data from two hundred and ten (210) third and fourth year randomly selected undergraduate students. Further, five hundred (500) students' assignments were collected and checked to verify lecturers' marking and comments on referencing and citation. Quantitative data was analysed by the use of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 16.0) to derive frequencies, percentages, mean, standard deviation, significant differences and similarities between programmes and the responses provided. Results indicated that students were exposed to many different referencing styles. The most common among these were the American Psychological Association (APA) referencing style, followed by the Harvard and Chicago referencing styles in that order. The results further showed that the majority of the students did not demonstrate understanding and skills in referencing and citation. Failure by students to understand referencing was reported to result from, among others, inconsistencies by lecturers in their own understanding of the referencing styles. Additionally, little emphasis was put on referencing by lecturers when marking assignments. The study recommends that referencing and citation should be accorded serious attention in teaching university students in order to prepare them as scholars and for advanced studies. Further, lecturers themselves need to upgrade their understanding of referencing and citation in order to provide appropriate guidance to their students.
Analysis of Efl Students’ Citation Practices and Problems in Academic Writing
International Journal of Educational Best Practices, 2018
Citing sources correctly is vital in academic writing including research proposals. Despite its significance, students seem to perform it poorly due to lack of knowledge and awareness of its role in their writing. As the result, they are often accused of committing plagiarism. One of the ways to prevent students from committing plagiarism is by providing them with sufficient knowledge and skills related to proper citations. This study is a preliminary effort to identify student citation practices within the English Education department of a state university in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Employing qualitative content analysis, the researcher examined samples of students' proposals to describe the ways in which citations were written and the common problems that occurred. The findings suggest that students mostly cited as nonintegral/non-reporting. The study also reveals that students' most common mistakes in the citation are found in language and content. The study concludes with the need to provide students with clear guidelines for citation and strong remarks on plagiarism.
An Analysis of the Citation Practices of Undergraduate Spanish Students
One basic skill of academic writers is to be able to locate their claims within a disciplinary framework. However, undergraduate students find it difficult to integrate sources into their own writing successfully, which often results in inappropriate textual borrowing and poor referencing. The aim of the research reported here was to identify problematic or inappropriate use of sources in texts produced by undergraduate Spanish students and examine the reasons for these unacceptable citation practices. For this purpose, I analyzed a learner corpus consisting of 35 literature reviews written by students of an EAP subject in the third year of a Bachelor's Degree in English Studies. The results suggest that their inappropriate use of sources arises mainly from three factors: (i) an unawareness of the dialogic nature of academic texts and of the functions of citation in these texts; (ii) low linguistic level and low level of academic literacy regarding the procedures involved in paraphrasing and synthesizing; (iii) lack of familiarity with the language of citations.
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.
Citation practices among non-native expert and novice scientific writers
Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2011
Citation is one of the most prominent features of academic writing through which academic writers both exhibit the breadth of their scholarship in a specific research area and subtly demonstrate their memberships of the disciplinary community. Citations are important rhetorical devices that allow seasoned writers to promote their current research findings persuasively and efficiently. This paper reports the results of a case study on citation practices in 14 research papers written by non-native expert and novice writers who belong to the same discipline and work in a major research university in Malaysia. Different types and functions of citations found in the established scholars' papers were compared to those of the novice academic writers within the same research field. The findings indicated that types and functions of citations employed were different: novice writers mainly used citation to attribute while the experts used citations strategically to provide support and justify their claims. Novices mainly used citations in isolation whereas expert writers succinctly synthesized various sources and made greater use of non-integral citations. The results of the study could provide better understanding of the rhetorical functions of citations in academic writing and offer pedagogical opportunities for teaching academic writing to novice research writers.
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...
Use of citation forms in academic texts by writers in the L1 & L2 context
tcue.ac.jp
This study investigates use of citation forms in 30 scientific research articles in biology, chemistry and physics written by writers in L1 and L2 contexts. Citation forms were divided into integral (citation outside brackets) and non-integral (citation inside brackets). Integral citation was further categorized into subject position, non-subject position and noun phrase such as "according to". Findings show that although a few papers were cited in integral citation across the disciplines, writers in the L2 context mainly employed them in a subject position, while writers in the L1 context spread them over three positions creating a stylistic variation.