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These guidelines apply to both minor and major assignments,
but especially to major assignments. It might seem as if all
these details and formalities are pretty pointless, but there
are good reasons for them. Most importantly, they help to
organise the presentation of your ideas and get your message
across more effectively. They also give you practice at writing
and working to specific requirements. And, of course, they'll
get you a better mark.
Contents Good academic writing should both give proper coverage of the topic and be easy to understand. So you need to focus on both the content and the style/presentation. In terms of style, your aim should be readability with
accuracy. Some people feel that using dense, convoluted or
highly abstract expression gives the impression that the writer
has a solid intellectual grasp of the content but we think that
clarity is a much better way to demonstrate this. When you are
reading an article or book, you know when it is clear and easy
to read and when it is not, and you know how much more you can
get from an article or book when it is easy to read. Well
that's what you want your writing to be like. Write for the reader!
Avoid inane presentational formulae such as 'It is
interesting that...' - unless it really is interesting and
relevant, in which case make sure that it is clear how it is relevant to your
argument/description. If it is an interesting point which is
not strictly relevant to your argument/description but which
you would nonetheless like to include, put it in a footnote.
Similarly, avoid formulae like 'It should/can/must be noted
that...' 'It is notable that...' - unless the point has
particular relevance at this stage in your
argument/description, in which case make sure that it is clear
how it is relevant.
2. Structure (mainly
relevant to major assignments)
It is not enough to simply string together facts, points or arguments selected from various sources. The essential task is to present a coherent overall view or argument, and to make clear how those facts, points etc. relate to that overall view. Recognising which points are relevant and developing a coherent overall view is intellectual work, and it is this which is the main focus of assignments (and assessment). You should be aware that different disciplines have different kinds of requirements for essays, partly through tradition but also because of the different natures of the different disciplines. Make sure you understand how the Linguistics requirements described in this documents differ from those in your other units. The basic structure of an essay is Introduction, Detailed Points/Arguments, and the Conclusion. This follows a
well-established principle for getting complex ideas across:
Tell'em what you're gonna
tell'em, Tell'em, Tell'em what you told'em.
Introduction The Introduction should succinctly do the following:
In this way, the Introduction is like an abstract of the assignment. It gives the reader the key points, and that gives them a mental framework for understanding the detailed points you need to make to justify your conclusions. Without a good Introduction which summarises the conclusions, the reader has to take on each of the detailed points as they read without really knowing where they're leading and that makes it harder for them to get the key points you're trying to make. Some students don't like the idea of summarising the conclusions in the Introduction - "Isn't that what the Conclusion is for?" This might be one of those differences between disciplines, or whatever, but it generally works better in Linguistics assignments to make this distinction between the logical conclusions to your argument/description and the final section of the assignment. Sketching out the structure of your argument/description
within the Introduction needn't take much more than something
like: "I will first discuss
A, then look at B and C" or "The first section deals with A, the
second with B and the third with C." Keep it short and
to the point.
Detailed Points/Arguments The sequence of individual points or arguments you provide in your assignment should be logically organised. Each should be clearly introduced so that the reader can
clearly distinguish what the detailed point is. Section
headings can be very useful in making the structure of your
argument/description clear. [This is one of those differences
between disciplines: section headings are punishable by death
in some other disciplines.]
Conclusion The Conclusion should briefly reiterate the central point and remind the reader of the main points of the argument/description which support that central point. Think of it as the thing that ties together the various threads in your assignment so that the reader can more easily see how the details fit into the overall argument/description. As the preceding paragraph implies, don't introduce new points in the Conclusion. However the Conclusion may identify further questions for research, but it certainly doesn't have to, and more often than not it's better not to. Avoid inane conclusions of
the type 'Well, different
people said different things and it's not clear yet which one
is right but progress marches on.'
The main reasons for providing references in your written work are:
You should bear in mind that the focus in assessment is on
your intellectual work, so
extensive quotation or close paraphrase is valued much less
highly than work which is in your own words. Using your own
words helps to demonstrate that you understand the intellectual
content of any sources you use and have considered the facts
and arguments involved.
3.1 Selection of Sources
It's not a good idea to start your work on an assignment with the thought that you just need to find a couple of references, just enough to get you to the required number of words. You need to do enough reading to form a solid overview of the topic - that's one of the key things we're looking for in assignments. On-line Sources An enormous amount of information is available on the web but you should focus on scholarly works. (i.e. Generally avoid sources such as a webpage entitled 'Dade County Family Services Tips for New Parents: How your child learns to speak'). Publications such as books and journal articles which have undergone academic refereeing are generally more highly valued in scholarly work. UWA students have access to many such books and journals in hardcopy and on-line via the Library catalogue. Many academics also make copies of their refereed and unrefereed articles available via their websites and these can be excellent sources. With unrefereed papers, one way to check whether they are likely to be suitable is to search for refereed publications by the same author. An author who has many refereed publications is likely to be a better bet than one who has no significant publications. But in the end you have to use your judgement. Relying solely on on-line sources for your assignment can
mean that you have ignored some excellent hard-copy resources
(books and journals) available in the library, and your
selection of sources may be assessed on this basis.
Make sure that all the URLs for on-line sources are accurate
and check that they are still live before you submit your
assignment. [Copy the URL from the assignment document and
paste it into the browser to make sure.] It is not uncommon for
a source to be 'NOT FOUND' when a lecturer or tutor follows up
on a reference, and this may prevent your lecturer/tutor from
crediting you with the intellectual work you have done in
summarising from the source. (Some students like to temporarily
save a copy of any on-line sources they use and to note in
their assignment that they are available if necessary.)
Age of Sources Depending on the assignment topic, the most appropriate
sources may be quite old. However when the focus is on current
work/theories/etc it is worth considering whether the age of
the source makes it the most suitable one or whether there are
more recent ones which would be better. When in doubt, feel
free to consult your lecturer/tutor.
Number of Sources Your aim should be to read widely enough to be confident
that you have a good overview of the points that are most
relevant to the topic. There is no simple formula for the
number of sources that should be consulted, and accordingly the
assessment of selected sources is not a simple count. As an
example, it would be rare for a good 2000-word assignment to
use less than, say, six sources but more important than just
the number is how they are
used. Five sources that barely contribute anything to the
assignment are less valuable than one source that makes a major
contribution.
Place of Source in the Scholarly Literature An important aspect of selecting sources is to recognise the place of a particular argument/theory/description within the wider context covered in textbooks and/or in the lecture program. An important part of this is often to understand the place of a source in the historical development of the relevant area of theory/description. One type of error that you can make in this regard is to
draw points or issues from different sources without realising
that they are quite different because they come from very
different theoretical backgrounds or descriptive approaches. If
you are unsure about such things, consult your lecturer/tutor.
No work should be included in the
references list unless it is explicitly cited in the body of
the assignment. Do not list works that you have
consulted in the process of preparing your assignment but do
not actually cite in the assignment. If some work you have
consulted has been directly important in developing your ideas,
then the relevant point warrants mention in your assignment.
We prefer that you don't use footnotes for referencing.
The sample of languages chosen by Bybee was 'designed to be as free as possible of genetic or areal bias' (1985b: 25). If you restate significant content from a source without using the form of words used
in that source, it must still be referenced to the relevant
page number in the source (but does not need to be in quotation
marks). Significant content here means a fact, idea, point,
analysis, argument, definition, etc.
For example, psycholinguistic research on the learning of inflectional systems seems to suggest that agglutinative patterns are always learned more quickly and accurately than fusional ones, irrespective of the type on the language being learned (Slobin 1971; Dressler 1988: 202). When presenting a number of points from a single source together in a single section, a reference need only be given at the beginning of the section so long as the section is worded in such a way as to make it clear throughout which points are yours and which come from the source. Example: Weinreich (1974: 18-9) lists four types of phonological interference. Under-differentiation occurs when a phonemic contrast in the second language involves phones which are more or less the same as the allophones of a single phoneme in the first language, and a speaker consequently fails to recognise the phonemic contrast in the second language. In over-differentiation, the opposite situation holds, and a speaker imposes a phonemic contrast from their first language on the phones of the second language. The remaining two types, reinterpretation of distinctions and phone substitution, are not relevant to the present point. An important point here is that readers (and teachers
assessing the work) take anything without quotation marks to be
your work. If you are drawing on other work, anything without
quotation marks is taken to be your presentation of your
interpretation of the source. For this reason, close
paraphrase, using the form of words used in the source but with
only a few words different or with only minor re-ordering,
should be avoided since it wrongly presents someone else's work
as yours. Close paraphrase of an
extensive section of the source is not acceptable (roughly: a
large part of a sentence, or more than one sentence) .
Fairly close paraphrase is only acceptable where it is giving
an explicit listing of a number of very brief points or facts
which form the background to a point you are making, but this
should be done sparingly.
Here are examples of some of the things to avoid:
3.3.3 Overall Characterisation or Summary
of Source
Di Sciullo and Williams (1987: 88-106) adopt a similar analysis of French causative constructions.They explicitly reject the earlier analysis by Valdman (1977) on the following grounds: ... Dorer (1988) offers an explanation along these lines for certain kinds of nominal expression in German. The main argument against analysing these as compounds... If you cite a source it is taken that you have consulted it yourself, unless you indicate otherwise. If you wish to refer to a source which you have not been able to consult yourself but which is referred to in another source, use the following format or an equivalent in the text: ...Halle (1983: 95, quoted in Kenstowicz 1994: 139) proposes a different solution... ...associated with the segmental tier (Archangeli 1988, cited in Roca 1994: 312). Both the original and secondary sources should appear in the reference list. These Guidelines
developed by John Henderson. Updated October 31 2005.
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