Why is integrating a source an important skill in academic writing?

Most teachers might agree that an important part of their educational work is to get students to engage new thinking from a variety of sources. However, what it means to "engage a source" as a research writer involves a great deal more than simply being able to document the source in MLA or APA.

A metaphor for "engaging sources" could be that you, as a writer, are the director of a play of your ideas. Your sources are like characters you bring on and off the staging of your ideas. Characters need to be introduced to audiences and understood by their lines, as well as how they fit into the whole play. To extend this metaphor even further, how the author "talks" with characters on stage is important. You can create a good source use by disagreeing or imagining a conversation with a source. In fact, creating sources with interviews, surveys, email correspondence, and using references to visual and audio sources can really add depth and color to your research.

A metaphor for smoothly integrating quotes and paraphrases could be a burger with buns. For readers to eat the burger, they use buns. The top bun is like a source introduction that uses the correct name and correctly puntuated source title. The meat is the source idea. The bottom bun is the follow up analysis of the source thinking that links the source to the thesis in the writer's essay.

Instead of using "states" or "proves," consider using a variety of signal phrases to clue readers into how the source fits into your thinking. Here are some examples of signal words that do more than simply say to readers, here's a source...suggests, implies testifies to, indicates, argues (that, for), shows, demonstrates, supports, underscores, etc.

Remember, after gathering a good variety of current, authoritative, informational, and colorful sources, your job as a writer is to make the ideas of others fit into your thinking.

To read more on effective quoting from Michael Harvey’s The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing, go to:

http://nutsandbolts.washcoll.edu/quoting.html

For a quick Guide to Integrating Quotations& Paraphrasing Content (MLA Style) go to:

http://senecac.on.ca/library/Research_Help/Citing_Sources/mla_integrating_quotes.html