An Investigation of Source Use Strategies in Published Research Articles and Graduate students' Research Papers

Abstract

Integrating source texts appropriately and effectively from various sources into one's own writing poses significant challenges for student writers as it demands sophisticated advanced academic skills. Beginning writers could benefit from studying strategies employed by more established writers from the same field. This paper reports the results of an investigation of source use strategies employed in 6 published research articles and 6 unpublished master's student papers from the field of chemical engineering. Different source use strategies were categorized as paraphrase, summary, generalization and exact copying. The findings demonstrated that while in research articles, summaries and generalizations were frequently employed, in students' papers, paraphrases were used the most. The results also showed that the frequency of extensive citations was much higher in students' papers and in many instances the student writers were too dependent on the source texts. Interviews with the student writers revealed gaps in their knowledge of acceptable source use while the expert informants credited their competence to practice, experience, and knowledge of the field.

Full text

June 2016
Volume 12, Issue 1, 148-182
An Investigation of Source Use Strategies in Published Research Articles and
Graduate students’ Research Papers
Kobra Mansourizadeh
Faculty of Education, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru 81310, Johor, Malaysia
Ummul K. Ahmad
Language Academy, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, 81310, Johor,
Malaysia
Abstract
Integrating source texts appropriately and effectively from various sources into one’s own writing
poses significant challenges for student writers as it demands sophisticated advanced academic skills.
Beginning writers could benefit from studying strategies employed by more established writers from
the same field. This paper reports the results of an investigation of source use strategies employed in
6 published research articles and 6 unpublished master’s student papers from the field of chemical
engineering. Different source use strategies were categorized as paraphrase, summary, generalization
and exact copying. The findings demonstrated that while in research articles, summaries and
generalizations were frequently employed, in students’ papers, paraphrases were used the most. The
results also showed that the frequency of extensive citations was much higher in students’ papers and
in many instances the student writers were too dependent on the source texts. Interviews with the
student writers revealed gaps in their knowledge of acceptable source use while the expert informants
credited their competence to practice, experience, and knowledge of the field.
Keywords: Academic writing; Research papers; Source use; Textual borrowing;
Second language writers