CITATION PRACTICES IN ACADEMIC WRITING

Erik Borg

Borg, E. (2000). Citation practices in academic writing. In P. Thompson

(Ed.), Patterns and perspectives: Insights into EAP writing practice
(pp. 26-42). Reading, UK: Centre for Applied Language Studies.

Final version, submitted 30 July 2000

Page numbers from the published version have been inserted to indicate the end of
each page in square brackets (i.e., [26] shows the end of page 26).
Citation practices in academic writing Erik Borg

Abstract

The difficulties that non-native English speaking students (NNS) have with
integrating their readings into their academic writing has been a source of concern
for students and lecturers alike. However, relatively few systematic attempts have
been made to describe their use of sources and compare them with that of native
speaking students (NS). Campbell (1990) is an exception, but her study was
limited (as she acknowledged) by its methodology. Using papers written in a
naturalistic setting, this study attempts to provide additional description of the
citation practices of non-native students in tertiary study.

This paper looks at the citation practices of sixteen students on an MEd. TESOL
programme in the UK in their initial, non-assessed assignment. NNS and NS
students both were found to have difficulty in manipulating and using source
material. These problems were exacerbated for NNS students by the difficulties
with using citations at second hand. Those writers who had problems had trouble
in interpreting the stance taken by the authors they are citing, and in taking a
stance in their own writing.

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Introduction

Non-native speakers of English studying in Britain and the United States

often struggle to integrate their readings into a new intellectual creation that
appropriately acknowledges others’ precedence while demonstrating an individual
perspective. When they fail to appropriately integrate others’ writings, they are
accused of intellectual dishonesty. Braine (1988) quotes unnamed teachers who
accuse non-native students of writing “mostly cut-and-paste jobs,” and supports
accusation by citing Abraham’s (1987) study. Scollon (1995) and Pennycook
(1996), while more sympathetic to the challenges NNS students face, also
describe the failure to appropriately cite sources. Other researchers suggest that
non-native speakers, because of their native language culture, bring thought
patterns different from those of native English speakers to academic writing
(Connor, 1996; Fox, 1994; Kaplan, 1966; Leki, 1995). Fox, for instance,
describes the attitude of a student from a “collectivist” society at a U.S. university:
“In a world where your thoughts, feelings and experiences are inextricably
connected to those of others, why would it be so important to sort out whose idea
is whose?” (1994, p. 37) A third group of researchers suggests that full control
and appropriate manipulation of source [26] material is a late-developing
phenomenon among both native and non-native speakers of English (Britton,
Burgess, Martin, McLeod & Rosen, 1975; Campbell, 1990; Mohan & Lo, 1985;
Pennycook, 1996). For these writers, achieving a balance between acknowledging
intellectual debt and making the content of a field one’s own is a difficult part of
intellectual growth for all students, and it may be made more so for NNS students
by cultural factors.
The purpose of this study is to look at the citation practices and difficulties
of native and non-native English speaking students in their first writing
assignment at a British university. This snapshot of citation practices extends
Campbell’s (1990) research and overcomes some of her self-acknowledged
limitations by looking at an out-of-class essay, with a research and writing time of
approximately two weeks. A corpus of essays written by native and non-native
speakers of English (NS and NNS students) was studied to investigate the
difficulties NNS students have, and how these might differ from the difficulties of

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the NS students. Though not longitudinal and so unable to assess continuing

development, this study supports Campbell’s suggestion that both NNS and NS
authors are not fully able to use source material even at the beginning of post-
graduate study.

Referencing in academic writing

One of the skills students beginning post-graduate study must develop is

independent research skills. In the social sciences and humanities, this includes
background reading within the field. Attendant on that is the display of that
reading and its integration into a new intellectual statement, one that explicitly
recognises the contribution of other writers, but that, through consideration, places
it in a new framework of agreement and disagreement. These requirements were
outlined for the students in this study in the University of Leeds Master’s of
Education Handbook [MEd. Handbook] (1997).
The display and integration of knowledge is managed through referencing,
a system of formal acknowledgement of the sources of other writers’ words and
thoughts. The skills of understanding and integrating others’ work into a student’s
own are tightly interwoven into the creation of an academic paper so that every
category of evaluation in the “Guidelines for Marking” in the MEd. Handbook
(1997) relates explicitly to the use of source material. These skills involve
understanding other writers’ work, being able to restate that understanding, having
the intellectual confidence to admit another’s precedence, and finally mastering
the control of a variety of tools for the proper display of this recognition. [27]
Yet there is little discussion of why students and academic authors should
or do cite others and little thoughtful guidance on when it is necessary. As
Campbell (1990) notes, “writing handbooks are rarely helpful in this matter, for
they usually either avoid the issue of documentation altogether, or they present an
anxiety-producing harangue about plagiarism, followed by confusing rules about
the punctuation of footnotes and bibliographical citations” (p. 226). There have
been a number of studies of the citation practices of published authors, though few
of student authors.

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Citation studies

According to Swales (1987), citations have been subjected to quantitative,

textual and a cluster of qualitative analyses (sociological, anthropological,
contrastive rhetorical and historical) that use extra-textual tools or chronological
comparisons to try to understand the motivation for, development of, and theory
of citations.
Swales (1986) focused on the rhetorical purpose of the citation by trying to
establish the author’s purpose and stance toward each citation. He included a
measure of the length of the citation as an indication of the weight given it.
Swales himself dropped this system of classification in Swales (1990), based in
part on the critical analysis by Jacoby (1987) of Swales (1986). The emphasis of
Swales (1990) is less on an evaluative analysis of citations, and much more on the
use of citations within the rhetorical structure of introductions to research articles.
Swales (1990) and Jacoby (1987) see the use of citations as an element in the
argumentative structure of the research article, with Jacoby analysing how
references contribute to the “rhetorical ‘tilt’ of a research article as a whole” (p.
34).
Campbell (1990) employs an experimental methodology to study NS and
NNS students’ use of sources in compositions. She analyses 30 in-class
compositions, and places student use of the source material on a cline from
quotation to original explanation, including two categories (Near Copies and
Exact Copies) that, because of their lack of attribution, are considered
inappropriate in academic writing. She found that both native and non-native
English speakers had trouble appropriately integrating source materials. Although
the use of a single reference source and the first draft of an in-class composition as
the experimental instrument allows a strong empirical analysis and easy access to
sources that may have been used inappropriately, the same methodology may have
limited the applicability of the study, as Campbell [28] notes. Nevertheless, she
concludes that “none of the students in the study, native or non-native, seem to
have a mastery of the appropriate acknowledgement of another author” (p. 223).

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Why Cite?

Looking at published native-speaking writers, Bavelas (1978, p. 160)

argues that pertinence, “true scholarly impact” on one’s own research, is the most
appropriate reason to cite another author’s work. Unlike other researchers of
discourse or citation practices (Hunston, 1993, 1994; Jacoby 1987; Pickard, 1995;
Swales, 1986, 1990), Bavelas finds among the authors she looks at a surprising
number of citations that are irrelevant, tangential or even inaccurate. However she
notes that, while needing to be apposite, unlike publishing authors student writers
also need to show their knowledge of their field of study. Jordan (1990), too, in a
paper intended to provide help for overseas postgraduates studying economics,
lists the display of knowledge as the first purpose of quotations.
Beyond accumulating a quilt of quotations, though, readings need to be
woven into a new intellectual fabric. The ability to summarise an author’s
argument or to excerpt and integrate portions into one’s own provides a measure
of the rewriter’s understanding of that argument. Additionally, failure to
appropriately acknowledge another’s precedence or words may have serious
academic consequences. The MEd. Handbook (1997) warns students of the
importance of being clear about the attribution of both words and ideas. Although
it claims not to want to “induce anxiety,” the passage does little to disentangle
problematic issues of originality and attribution, and instead mainly clarifies the
penalties for failing to find the correct relationship:

Failure to do this [distinguish between one’s own words and ideas, and
others’], whether or not it is intentional, can lead to accusations of
plagiarism, which is equivalent to cheating in an examination, and in
academic terms is a capital offence. (pp. 25-26, underlining in original)

Student citations, then, need to be apt, demonstrate knowledge of the field,

and be appropriately marked.

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The corpus in this study

This paper studies a corpus of sixteen essays written by native and non-native
English speaking students as their first assignment on a Master’s of Education in
TESOL programme at the University of Leeds over two academic years [29]
(commencing in 1997 and 1998). The essays were not intended to be marked for
course evaluation but rather to provide staff and students “with an opportunity to
clarify each others’ expectations in terms of style and content of assignment
writing” (INTRODUCTORY (‘non-assessed’) ASSIGNMENT, 1997-8, [Prompts,
Appendix A]). In many ways the essays were “a rehearsal for writing required on
the course” (Prompts, Appendix A). At 2,500 words, they were slightly shorter
than the 3,000 word assessed papers, and, of course, they did not respond to a
taught module. Students were encouraged not to read “more than one or two
articles for this assignment,” though they were also instructed to “identify external
evidence that might be available as support for [their] argument...” (Prompts,
Appendix A). They had two weeks for research, writing and revision, and only
two students limited themselves to referring to as few as two sources. Students
wrote on one of five topics. These topics are given in Appendix A. Short titles
for the topics are:

 Innovation
 Using stories
 Teaching plans
 Four salaries
 Textbooks

The first cohort of students were asked for their papers by a general
written request, while those in the second cohort were approached directly to
increase the variety of backgrounds in the study. Additionally, some students in
the first cohort provided copies of their tutor’s feedback sheets, which are
occasionally referred to. The corpus consists of sixteen essays on five topics
written by students of seven nations (Table 1).

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Provided tutor’s
Name English speaker Nation Term Topic
comments
Dora NS UK 97-98 Teaching plans Yes
Frankie NNS Taiwan 97-98 Textbooks as agent for change Yes
Geena NNS Taiwan 97-98 Four salaries Yes
Hillary NS UK 97-98 Textbooks as agent for change Yes
Ilona NNS China 97-98 Textbooks as agent for change No
Katherine NS UK 97-98 Innovation Yes
Louise NNS Turkey 97-98 Teaching plans Yes
Norma NS UK 97-98 Teaching plans Yes
Olivia NNS Korea 97-98 Textbooks as agent for change Yes
Qing NNS China 97-98 Innovation Yes
Ruth NNS China 97-98 Innovation Yes
Sylvia NNS Taiwan 98-99 Four salaries No
Tessa NNS Oman 98-99 Teaching plans No
Ulla NNS Kenya 98-99 Using stories No
Vivian NNS Korea 98-99 Innovation No
Wanda NS UK 98-99 Textbooks as agent for change No

Table 1. Names, English-speaking status, nationality, term of study for MEd., and topic of
essay.

Citations of these essays are referred to by the author’s initial followed by the
number of the citation; the reference is then set in parentheses. For example, (D,
3) refers to Dora’s third citation.

A typology of citations

The citations in the essays are analysed in two dimensions. The first is a
more detailed version of Swales’s (1986) “short” and “extensive1.” Citations are
analysed as being extended, brief, a fragment, or a paraphrase/summary. All
except paraphrase/summary are direct quotations. An extended quotation is [30]
longer than forty words. A brief quotation is a t-unit or more, which is shorter
than forty words. A t-unit is a single independent clause, including all modifying
dependent clauses (Crookes, 1990). A fragment is a direct quote that is less than a
t-unit. Paraphrases and summaries differ from each other, but are united in being

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another writer’s thoughts expressed in the author’s own words, and so needing an
overt reference. Paraphrase/summary (hereafter, summary), in this case, refers to a
specific reference, but one that is restated in the author’s own voice. These
categories are used to analyse variations in the pattern of integration of referenced
matter into the student author’s text. [31]
The other dimension by which citations are analysed is one grounded in
the data, which describes the apparent function of the citation within the studied
text. This typology characterises the functions as an aid to understanding
variations in usage. Five categories are proposed, with examples provided.
1. Background. The topic is surveyed, usually in advance of discussion,
though occasionally in summation. E.g.,
Loewenberg Ball and Feiman-Nemser (cited from ibid.: 316) also
said that “...textbooks are consistently criticized as inadequate to
meet the needs of the classroom.” (F, 2)
2. Claim asserted or denied. This is similar to Jacoby’s (1987) Hypothetical
and Real pattern and refers to a citation that directly or indirectly advances
the argument of the paper, or states a position to be opposed in argument.
Unlike many studies, this category does not focus on the stance taken, but
rather on whether the citation is an integral part of the author’s argument.
E.g.,
Hutchinson & Torres (ibid.: 325) have also pointed out that “the
textbook makes it possible to bring changes into the classroom.
The textbook, in other words, should be seen as a means of “re-
skilling” not “de-skilling.” (F, 7)
3. Example. A source provides a representative of the situation (etc.) under
discussion. E.g.,
One of the teachers in Woodward and Lindstromberg’s survey said,
“I often don’t look at the lesson plan at all in the classroom. But I
need to know it’s there. I need to know what the next stage is or I
feel a bit panicky.” (L, 7)
4. Definition. A source provides a definition or an authoritative use of
technical language. E.g.,
What is syllabus design? Robert Keith Johnson (1989:28) said that
Syllabus design is thus the process by which linguistic content—

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vocabulary, grammar, notions, functions—is selected and

organized. (G, 4)
5. Hortatory. A quotation, frequently but not exclusively found at the end of
an essay, in which a source is used to exhort or to express [32] vividly the
article’s point of view by the selection and presentation of another’s
words. Many are extended citations. E.g.,
Education is at its core contextual..., there can be no good
curriculum independent of the context in which it is used.(Joel
Samoff, 1996, P231) (R, 7)

Formatting citations

For the purposes of this study, a citation has been counted when an student
author refers to another author by mentioning his, her or their name(s) in the text,
or uses a parenthetical marking referring to “ibid.”, “op. cit.” or the source’s
name. References at second hand (e.g., “Swan (cited from Hutchinson & Torres,
1994: 315)” (F,1)) were counted as single citations; no other examples of two or
more source within-text references were found. For the purposes of the
quantitative analysis, the student’s marking of her text has been followed. If a
citation is marked with quotation marks, it is considered a direct quotation; if not,
it is considered a summary. No instances of passages being integrated into texts
without any marking (plagiarism) were noted.

Quantitative analysis

If one looks at the surface of the use of citations in this corpus, some
differences in the patterns of usages seem evident. Nevertheless, the database is
quite small (n = 16), and as soon as groupings smaller than native or non-native
speakers are introduced, individual patterns of writing become prominent. Simple
counts and percentages provide information, though, that can help frame some
questions to be posed through close reading of the papers.
Summarising the results of this analysis2, one of the most salient
observations is that non-native speaking authors produced fewer citations than

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native speaking authors did. Although there were more than twice as many NNS
authors as NS authors in the study, the two groups generated similar numbers of
citations. Eleven NNS authors produced 143 citations, 53.6% of the total of 267
citations in the corpus, while five NS authors produced 124 citations, 46.4% of the
total.
This occurred partly because five of eleven NNS authors chose to write on
two topics (Innovation and Four salaries) that were not linked to a specific text
and that invoked the author’s personal experience in the prompt. Only one NS
author wrote on either of these topics. [33]
Native speaking authors produced significantly more citations than NNS
authors when writing on the same topics. The NS authors produced more than
50% more citations when writing on Teaching plans or Textbooks than did the
NNS authors writing on the same topics.
When looking at the types of citations in terms of length, the most
significant variation occurs in the category of Extended citations, where NNS
authors produced more than twice as many extended citations. In other categories,
NNS authors as a group produced approximately as many citations as the NS
authors did, a result roughly in line with the finding that each group produced
about half of the citations.
Overall, then, quantitative analysis indicates that the NNS authors in this
corpus include fewer citations in their writing. They chose to write on topics
calling for fewer citations, but even when writing on topics that involve writing
from sources, they use fewer citations than NS authors. They may, however, use
longer quotations.

Qualitative analysis

Both NNS and NS students arrive on the MEd. programme typically

having been out of university for years, during which time they did little or no
academic writing. Additionally, the students from non-English language school
systems may bring expectations based on their own schooling that often do not
match the demands that the MEd. course will impose. The non-assessed

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assignment is intended to familiarise all students with the expectations of post-

graduate writing in the United Kingdom.
Non-native English speaking students often find the writing demands
daunting. They feel, as did the Master’s students reported by Bloor and Bloor
(1989), that they are significantly disadvantaged in comparison with the native
English speaking students on the course. In the face of this, then, the continuity
between NNS students and NS students on this first assignment is noteworthy.
This first piece of academic writing shows both NS and NNS authors struggling
with the technical and rhetorical requirements of citations. Native speaking and
non-native English speaking authors made frequent errors in their citations and
bibliographies. Errors included variations in the form of references within the
text, the failure to include beginning and ending quotation marks, variations in
bibliographic reference formats, and works omitted from bibliographies. Errors in
quotations were common. Student errors that could not be laid to confusion were
often the result of carelessness or, perhaps more [34] precisely, the failure to
realise that the details were consequential. Hillary, a NS author who cited sources
more often than any other author, is criticised by her tutor both for mechanical
errors (“please check biblio. layout—yours seems to be your own!”) and for her
rhetorical handling of her citations. Her tutor noted that “you might like to work
on how you incorporate a ‘base’ article more into your work, and how you refer to
others.”
Ruth, a NNS author, “referred appropriately to the literature,” her tutor
said, but “you are not critical enough of the literature and theory which you refer
to.” Her paper includes eleven citations, the average for all students writing on
Innovation, referencing four authors, one of whom is omitted from her
bibliography. With the exception of two short t-unit quotations, she used
fragments or summaries that she fluently integrated into her text. Her primary use
for her citations is to provide definitions, as in, “Since language is ‘a dynamic
process rather than a static phenomenon’ (ibid.), teachers should allow for
‘flexibility and differences’ (ibid.) in learning it.” (R, 3-4). This tight
interweaving of source texts with her own text amplified the difficulty of
separating her voice from that of her sources and may have been part of the lack
of critical stance her tutor referred to. Hunston (1994) argues that each citation
should carry a marker of the author’s stance to the source text, which Ruth fails to

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do. Such a stance is an overt knowledge claim. Myers (1989) describes the
linguistic complexity of making a knowledge claim, calling it a “face threatening
act” (p. 2). Bloch and Chi (1995) have cautiously suggested an additional cultural
weight that may have been felt by a Chinese apprentice scholar like Ruth:
“Confucian rhetoric does not rely as heavily on logic to justify a claim; instead it
relies more on prior wisdom as the basis of argumentation” (p. 261). Her usage
might reflect her initial understanding of the stance she assumed she was expected
to take toward published authors. The result of her choices was that she drew
back from the critical thinking her tutor expected.
Native speaking authors tended to have less difficulty making clear their
stance toward their sources. Wanda strongly aligns herself with her source when
she writes, “I agree with Hutchinson and Torres’ claim (1994) that the textbook
provides both learners and teachers with a sense of security and confidence” (W,
17). Dora, another NS, shows more skill in two ways. She uses more impersonal
reporting verbs, as when she writes, “Woods found another technique teachers had
for dealing with the demands of decision-making…” (D, 16). Impersonal
reporting mechanisms, like the use of the passive voice, distance the reporter from
the source (Hunston, 1993), allowing the opening of research niches with less
overt criticism. Second, when Dora asserts a stance [35] based on her own
experience, she limits its scope and inserts qualifiers such as the phrase, I think,
found in the passage below:

As Woods points out, on many teacher-training courses “discussions of

planning (creating lesson plans, for example) are often prescriptive rather
than descriptive.” (ibid: 141). In addition, I think, the need for constant
evaluation which feeds into the development of a course should be
emphasised over the questionable task of planning a course without ever
having seen the students. (D, 19)

Ruth, like half the authors in the corpus, uses a citation for what I have
labelled “hortatory” purposes. This citation stands alone in her text as a separate
paragraph, and is not woven into her text: “Education is at its core contextual...,
there can be no good curriculum independent of the context in which it is
used.(Joel Samoff, 1996, P231)” (R, 7). In this case, her citation seems more like

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an epigraph that in a book might evoke a theme or historical figure. While

hortatory citations are relatively uncommon in research articles or monographs,
they are relatively common among this group of student writers. Eight authors,
evenly divided between the NS and NNS groups, used hortatory quotations. Often
these are extended quotations (forty words or more), and in six out of the eight
essays that use them, they form the last or penultimate sentence of the essay.
Ruth’s hortatory citation is short and occurs toward the middle of her text (after
approximately 1,200 words). Wanda’s (a NS student) hortatory citation is more
typical, sixty-five words in length and the last words of her essay.
In an effort to gauge the occurrence of similar citations in published
applied linguistic literature, I looked at the endings of all the major articles in one
year (1995) of TESOL Quarterly and ELT Journal. Only four articles of twenty-
one in TESOL Quarterly could be said to end with hortatory citations, the longest
17 words in length. In the shorter ELT Journal articles, of thirty-two articles, only
two ended with hortatory citations.
This divergence from published examples is interesting because the
students in other ways conspicuously notice the form of articles they read, and use
them as models for their own writing. Both Hutchinson and Torres (1994) and
Woods (1996) defined major terms. For instance, Hutchinson and Torres in a
footnote define “textbook” (p. 328) for the purposes of their article. Four of the
five authors on that topic provided definitions of textbooks, and three of the four
authors writing about Teaching plans (based on Woods, 1996) provide definitions
of their terms, while only one of the students who wrote on any [36] other topic
did. The widespread use of hortatory citations seems a particular part of
apprentice scholar language.

Lamination

If there were an area that challenges the NNS authors significantly more
than the NS authors, it would be in the attribution of language that has already
been quoted. In both the mechanics and their understanding of the stances
presented, NNS authors had problems. Scollon (1994) describes some of the
difficulties that NNS authors have with multiple layers of attribution, but he

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argues that NS scholars, flooded with information, are also having difficulty in
this area (as does Pennycook, 1996). Drawing on concepts developed by Goffman
(1974, 1981), Scollon uses the concept of lamination to explain how an author
may have a multilayered relationship with a text. There is a difference, he argues,
between an author and a principal. While an author selects the sentiments
(including those attributed to others) and encodes them in words, a principal is
“someone who is committed to what they say” (Scollon, 1994, p. 37). Hutchinson
and Torres (1994) author the words, “The idea that textbooks produce a kind of
dependency culture among teachers and learners is echoed…” (p. 315), but they
are not the principals of those words, since they disagree with them, as well as
with the quotation from Swan (1992) that this extract summarises. Lamination
describes these layers of responsibility within one authorial voice. Scollon argues
that new means of academic communication—conferences, telephones and e-
mail—have made traditional citation practices outdated and that they need to be
rethought. He says there should be more emphasis on principalship, the
expression of stance. Acknowledging without entering Scollon’s wider discussion
of a need for a rethinking of citation practices, this study supports his description
of the difficulties NNS authors have with lamination. Ilona quotes Hutchinson and
Torres, “Textbook produces a dependency culture” (I, 4), but fails to notice their
opposition to this position.
Vivian’s essay illustrates some of the difficulties with lamination and
suggests the wider ramifications of these problems. Writing on the topic of
Innovation, her bibliography lists four books. She refers to seven additional
works in her text, most, seemingly at second-hand, though this is not always
obvious. She quotes Lewin (1987) from a book he edited, although her flawed
citation inadvertently acknowledges its secondary nature. In her within-text
reference, she includes the letter a after the citation for Lewin (1987a) implying
that this is a second-hand reference. (Only one work by Lewin (1991) is listed in
her bibliography.) All of her citations are marked as summaries, that is, they have
[37] no quotation marks. It is exceedingly difficult to tell what she herself
believes; she is the author, but she seems not to be the principal of her words.
Her crucial failure to accept the role of principal remains after her citation
formatting is cleaned up, her secondary references are included in her
bibliography, and her quotations are demarcated.

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Another writer who has difficulty with laminated quotations is Ilona. She
cites a passage that Hutchinson and Torres draw from Allwright and Bailey
(1991): “It might be affected by the use of textbooks, but the greatest need is in
fact the interactions to be effectively managed by both teachers and students
(ibid:)” 3 (I, 13). She does not note the secondary nature of the citation.
Hutchinson and Torres write that, “As Allwright and Bailey (1991: 21) point out,
the greatest need is in fact for the interaction to be effectively managed—by both
teachers and learner—‘to give everyone the best possible opportunities for
learning the language’” (p. 317). The fundamental problem with not being clear
on what is quoted is not that Hutchinson and Torres (or perhaps Allwright and
Bailey) are not receiving the credit due them, though I support that, but that
Ilona’s thoughts are not separated from her source(s). Allwright and Bailey (1991,
pp. 18-22) discuss the ways learners and teachers interact—the ways they get
along—without mentioning textbooks. They do use the phrase, “manage
interaction,” though they apologise for its seeming “pompous” (p. 20); do
Allwright and Bailey support textbooks or giving “everyone the best possible
opportunities for learning the language?” (p. 21, as cited in Hutchinson and
Torres, 1994, p. 317). The phrases are carried forward, from Allwright and Bailey
to Hutchinson and Torres to Ilona, without ever being deconstructed.
Elsewhere in her paper, Ilona writes,

First, a good textbook seems to be able to meet most of the students’ needs
with guide and instructions. In this sense, it is the students that should be
the best consumers of textbooks not only the teachers as Hutchinson points
out when talking about teacher development (ibid.). (I, 9)

Hutchinson and Torres’s point is that teachers should become “better consumers
of textbooks” (1994, p. 327) in terms of selecting them. Ilona makes a different—
and valid—point that, with a guide and instructions, students should become
better able to use textbooks, but her point is muddled with Hutchinson and
Torres’s. The formatting of citations should not be “confusing rules about the
punctuation of footnotes and bibliographical citations” (Campbell, 1990, p. 226),
but the deconstruction of what the source intended, carefully separated from the
author’s stance toward it. [38]

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There is a tension for all student writers between the requirement that
essays show both originality and synthesis. This will always be difficult to
reconcile, more difficult for NNS students. Qing’s tutor advises her to be “very
clear and distinct where you are describing observations and where you are
quoting from the literature.” Scollon (1995) quotes Bakhtin as reminding us that
“we assimilate forms of language only in the form of utterances.” “Language is
populated—overpopulated—with the intentions of others” (p.21). Qing
appropriated a vivid phrase that Hutchinson and Torres (1994) use to describe
textbooks to describe an innovation (her topic) at her university: “On the whole,
the innovation has been very successful. It is not only surviving, but also
thriving.” (Q, p.7) Even when an NNS author is largely successful—like Qing,
unlike Ilona—the tension remains. Only through intense struggle can they
reconcile originality and synthesis.

Conclusion

This study involved a relatively small number of papers from a group of

English teachers studying at one British university. Approximately a quarter of
the students enrolled on this programme during the time of the study allowed their
papers to be read. These factors limit the wider applicability of the study. On the
other hand, the students had two weeks to research and write their papers, and
while they were not encouraged to do extensive reading, they were not limited in
their sources. The result was an academic paper that is more typical of the work
that is expected of them on Master’s programmes than in more controlled studies.
This study found that, in common with NS authors working at this level,
NNS authors have difficulty with the formal aspects of citations. Their patterns in
the use of sources are similar to NS authors in terms of the length and function of
citations. However, NNS authors used fewer citations and they chose to write on
topics that allowed less writing from sources.
In their general use of sources, the apprentice scholars in this study
observe closely the models they are presented with and try to follow them, even
when this may lead them astray. There are areas that, though problematic for NS
authors, particularly challenge NNS authors. One area is the use of citations taken

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at second hand. Difficulty with such citations is not simply a formatting problem,
but represents a problem in the stance to be taken toward the source. [39]

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Citation practices in academic writing Erik Borg

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Bloch, J. and L. Chi. 1995. ‘A comparison of the use of citations in Chinese and
English academic discourse’. in D. Belcher and G. Braine (eds.),
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Bloor, M. and T. Bloor. 1989. ‘Cultural expectations and socio-pragmatic
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Braine, G. 1988. ‘A reader reacts…’. (Two commentaries on Ruth Spack’s
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Campbell, C. 1990. Writing with other’s words: using background reading text
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language writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Crookes, G. 1990. ‘The utterance and other basic units for discourse analysis’.
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Fox, H. 1994. Listening to the world: Cultural issues in academic writing.
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Goffman, E. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
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Hunston, S. 1994. ‘Evaluation and organization in a sample of written academic
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Hutchinson, T. and E. Torres. 1994. ‘The textbook as agent of change’. ELT
Journal, 48/4: 315-328.
Jacoby, S. 1987. ‘References to other researchers in literary research articles’.
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Jordan, R. R. 1990. ‘He said: Quote…unquote’. in T. Dudley-Evans and W.
Henderson (eds.), The language of economics. ELT Documents.
Kaplan, R. B. 1966. ‘Cultural thought patterns in inter-cultural education’.
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Leki, I. 1995. ‘Twenty-five years of contrastive rhetoric: text analysis and
writing pedagogies’. TESOL Quarterly, 25/1: 123-143.
Leki, I. and J. Carson. 1997. ‘“Completely different worlds”: EAP and the
writing experiences of ESL students in university courses’. TESOL
Quarterly, 31/1: 39-69.

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Mohan, B. A. and W. A.-Y. Lo. 1985. ‘Academic writing and Chinese students:
Transfer and developmental factors’. TESOL Quarterly 19/3: 515-534.
Moravcsik, M. and P. Murugesan. 1975. ‘Some result on the function and
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Myers, G. 1989. ‘The pragmatics of politeness in scientific articles’. Applied
Linguistics, 10/1: 1-35.
Pennycook, A. 1996. ‘Borrowing others’ words: Text, ownership, memory, and
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Pickard, V. 1995. ‘Citing previous writers: what can we say instead of “say”?’
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Strodt-Lopez, B. 1996. ‘Using stories to develop interpretative processes’. ELT
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APPENDIX A

Prompts for the Non-assessed Assignment, October 1997

SCHOOL OF EDUCATION MEd TESOL

UNVERSITY OF LEEDS 1997-8

INTRODUCTORY ('non-assessed’) ASSIGNMENT

The purpose of this Introductory Assignment is to provide us – staff and students –

with an opportunity to clarify each others' expectations in terms of style and
content of assignment writing for the Masters course. It is also a rehearsal for
writing required later on in the course.

Choose one of the following topics

1. Report on an innovation that you have been involved with in your

institution: describe the innovation; and discuss its strengths and weaknesses,
explaining what evidence you have for your views, and any other kinds of
evidence that might have helped those involved to improve the development.

2. Barbara Strodt-Lopez (1996. Using stories to develop interpretative processes.

ELT Journal, 50:1, 35-42) suggests a procedure for using oral and written stories
in the classroom. Referring to relevant aspects of your own experience, discuss
how far this procedure would work, identifying likely strengths and weaknesses,
giving reasons, and suggesting ways in which you could verify your views in a
classroom.

3. Woods (1996. Teacher Cognition in Language Teaching, Chs 5 & 6) points out
that teaching plans are usually significantly different from the way they work out
in practice. Drawing on your own experience, discuss this view and the
implications of your discussion for the development of the teaching of ESOL.

4. If you were given the equivalent of four full time salaries to spend on
language teaching in your institution over the next five years in any way you
liked, how would you use the money and why? What problems would you
anticipate? And explain how you would try to overcome the problems, giving
reasons. [43]

5. Hutchinson & Torres (1994, ELT Journal, 48:4, 315-328) argue that new
textbooks can be an important tool in the development of language teaching.
Explain how far you agree with this view, indicating other aspects of the teaching
context that can affect this influence, and discussing what can best be done to
support this impact of new textbooks.

Length: Write 2,500 words.

Submission: Monday 20 October. Please hand in to Martin Bygate via the pigeon
holes.

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Criteria of assessment: these will be along the lines of those in the MEd
handbook. You are not expected to read more than one or two articles for this
assignment. However we ask you to pay particular attention to the following
points: your account of the principles being used in the argument; your ability to
relate personal experience to general principles; your ability to relate your
argument to external evidence that is or might be available as support, so you are
not too dependent on anecdotal evidence; the clarity of the organisation of your
paper; and the clarity of presentation, including an introduction outlining the
organisation of the paper, and a conclusion.

Introductory assignments will be marked and returned to you by your academic

tutor. [44]

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1
Swales (1986, 1990) did not differentiate between quotations and paraphrase/summary, as this
paper does. A long quotation or a long paraphrase would both be considered extensive in Swales’s
typology.
2
Further information will be supplied by the author upon request.
3
The use of “ibid.” exacerbates difficulties in locating source material. Ibid., in this case, refers to
Hutchinson & Torres (1994) and not to the immediate preceding citation. Hillary’s (NS author)
tutor noted that she was not using it correctly; the Publication Manual of the APA (1994) does not
list it at all. While I have tried to avoid overemphasising difficulties in citation formatting, I think
“ibid.” provides no advantages over in-text citations in standard “Harvard” system format, and
may be confusing to use.

[Endnotes appeared on p. 40 in published version]

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