In drawing ideas or information from a source, you have three choices:
- Summary: boil down the idea or information, transforming a page into a sentence or an article into a paragraph.
- Paraphrase: flesh out an idea or present information in your own words, perhaps using new examples, with only minor changes in the length.
- Quotation: use the precise wording from the source (in quotation marks).
Let’s think about how you might use these different approaches to presenting a source, depending on the role of that source in your project. Imagine that you’re writing an essay that critiques the current system of higher education in the United States:
- Which method is best suited to presenting Harari’s notion of shared fictions as a Theory source?
- Which method is best suited to presenting a course syllabus as an Exhibit source?
- Which method is best suited to presenting an essay on higher education as an Argument source?
- Which method is best suited to presenting college enrollment statistics collated by the US government as a Background source?
Post your answers to these questions in this Google Form.