Friday, May 1, 2015

Why you no Cite?

In Stanley Fish's article, What Should CollegesTeach? Part 3, he wrote about how high schools and middle schools don't effectively teach their students. Saying they come to college not knowing, "How to write clean English sentences", This being the teachers fault for not teaching them in an effective way. Sentence structure being an important part of college writing to Fish, he believes that college students should know this basic tool to people able to succeed in college writing. Not knowing this makes it harder for college teachers, cause they would have to teach the students things they should have learned in middle school and high school. I would have to agree with Fish here, but there are many other far more important  needs to succeed in college writing, mine being citation. Citation is usually not taught in high school as a serious topic so they go into college thinking of it as something un-important.

When students don't cite their work
In my previous years of schooling, I've always found citations to be a bother, and for them completely unnecessary. I would sometimes leave citations out, forgetting to do them, or just not having the time. This would leave my teachers feeling or/and thinking this.

It wasn't until my observations at the Writers Studio that I realized they were quite important. They can help you and your readers in so many other different ways than giving credit for the originals owners work.  (1) Citations help your readers understand and get more from your topic. (2) It helps out fellow students and readers with any future essays they might be doing that are similar to your topic. (3) Citing your sources gives your readers a chance to see if your topics are valid enough to trust. There are so many more to discuss but let's focus on these three. 

Citation is a really important part in a Research Paper, but most schools don't teach it. Narrowing it down, most English teachers don't teach it. What they don't see is that Citation could help your reader get more and understand more form your topic or essay. Readers go to your sources to read and get more in depth with what you're trying to tell them. If they get stuck in something, or something you say isn't clear to them, citations are always handy. They could go to your sources to see what you mean or get an opinion from someone who might know more on the topic.

Anyone can B.S a paper and make you think it's actually valid. Citations help readers see if your sources are trustworthy or not. They could go to your citations to see if they are from valid people. People who know what they're talking about, or profession in it. This is a effective way of going back and tracing the original source, if your paper is based on someone who knows what they're really doing. When you're you're doing a research paper, you would of course need sources to back up your points. These sources could be used by readers to go over to see if it is valid or to just to get more from your topic.

According to Judy Hunter of Grinnell College, "In general, scholars must be able to trace how ideas develop in order to consider, think about, and test them accurately." (2). In other words, Readers read your paper to get information on a certain topic, but how could they trust something that they don't know where it's from or if it is trustworthy.
Citation is very much needed according to this guy

Most people don't understand this, readers included. You could read citations for more than seeing where they're getting information. It could be for the reader's benefit and the writers. Not only do they do this, but you could help a fellow student or your readers on finding citations or giving them an idea for their paper as well. This is a faster, easier and more effective way than going on the internet for hours and searching for sources. This causes stress and causing you to not do your best on the paper. Citations help save life's and grade averages. Putting citations and putting them in the right way is like giving your readers a helping hand, which they are sure to appreciate. 

Since I've finally fulfilled the word count, I would leave on this very well thought out pun. You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish.