In academic writing, we use both italics and quotation marks for a limited number of specific reasons, several of which are related to an extremely important skill in all areas of academic work: the use of sources. Academics constantly cite sources containing other people's ideas, and sometimes their exact words, in their work: to agree, to disagree, for support, for a starting point, as a topic, and so on. Learning when and how to use sources effectively is one of our main goals in this course, and it is a primary focus of chapter 6 of Quest, which we are working through at the moment (Hartmann, 2007).
In order to practise these essential academic skills, and also to ensure that we are reading regularly from a variety of sources and thinking critically about what we read, we will be making regular blog posts responding to articles published on the BBC News website.
Everyone gets to write up their response to an article once a week, according to the following schedule:
And don't worry, you don't have to wait until it's your day to respond to something from the BBC News, you can also comment on your classmates' posts every day.Monday | Nu | Orn | Net |
Tuesday | David | Ko | Bank |
Wednesday | A | Gift | Ning |
Thursday | Christina | Poome | Shu |
Friday | Namkhang | Apple |
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A few notes that you might find useful:
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| Remove formatting |
- When you copy and paste into the blog from another website or other source, it's usually a good idea to use the "Remove formatting" tool.
This is useful when you want to quote a few exact words, or to copy information for a reference list entry. - For the same reason, do not write in MS Word and then paste into your blog post (although I occasionally do do that, for example, the table above). There is no need to write in MS Word, but if you do, use the "Remove formatting" tool after you paste into your blog post.
- I often email articles to myself as I'm reading the BBC News and other sites. Most online news sites offer easy tools to email a link to someone, so I use it to send a reminder to myself of something that caught my interest.
- Do not delete the pre=formatted reference section. You will definitely need it if you are writing a response to an article in the BBC News or elsewhere.
- Although I initially suggest the BBC News, you are welcome to check out and respond to articles from any of my list of approved sources. (The local papers The Nation and the Bangkok Post are not on that list because they are pretty much garbage and not good examples of writing for you to be reading, with the exception of material that they copy and paste form other sources.)
- possibly to be added to if something else occurs to me later.
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References
BBC News at http://news.bbc.co.uk/
Hartmann, P. (2007). Quest 2 Reading and Writing, (2nd. ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill
Hartmann, P. (2007). Quest 2 Reading and Writing, (2nd. ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill
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