Post 3: Trustful Sources in Academic Writing

      Using sources in an academic paper can be a good tool to use in the writing process, but are you using them correctly? More often than not, sources aren't correctly used in the writing process including linking your quote in text with the source found at the bottom of the page. According to Mike Bunn who wrote,  "How to Read like a Writer" he stated, "most college students RLW is a new way to read, and it can be difficult to learn at first." His method explains how reading like a writer will help you to better understand how the author came to the choice of specific sources and their perspective in the writing process.

    Bunn works his quotes and paraphrases into text to help explain and drive the narrative. For instance he wrote, "In 1997, I was a recent college graduate living in London for six months and working at the Palace Theatre owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber. The Palace was a beautiful red brick, four-story theatre in the heart of London’s famous West End, and eight times a week it housed a three-hour performance of the musical Les Miserables. Because of antiquated fire-safety laws, every theatre in the city was required to have a certain number of staff members inside watching the performance in case of an emergency" and asked a number of questions such as, "Do you know who the intended audience is? Again, I hope that you know this one by now" and "What about the genre? Is this an essay? An article? What would you call it?"

These are the questions we have to ask our self in the beginning if we are going to think like a writer. When we ask the question about the audience, we have to decide "Am I the target audience?" Maybe this particular piece wasn't written for you and maybe this is why the story doesn't grab your attention. These are all thoughts we have to ask ourselves in order to be a better writer.

    When writing a piece myself I had to draw the same decision in order to get comfortable with the reader:

"Ever been stumped on a large assignment due for a school project that may be simple to do but you just aren’t feeling it at the moment?"

This was the opening or beginning to my particular piece of writing and by asking this question I was able to target a specific audience in order to capture their attention.

    Now for these quotes and driving them into the piece, we are pulling them apart from the writing so that the reader can better understand. We have to make sure that these sources are correctly captured in the work cited page in order to give our readers a more in depth research tool.

    Reading like a writer can defiantly be tricky but understanding these techniques can give you a better sense on exactly what the story is trying to convey and how the writer came about their ideas.