In-Class Exercise:
Scholarly Writing as a Record of Influence

Come to class with a copy of a scholarly article relevant to your interests either in hard-copy or saved on your computer. This article must have academic documentation throughout: properly cited quotations and a works cited or reference page.

Open a new blank document. Begin by providing a correct works cited or reference list entry for the article at the top of the page in either MLA or APA format. Presumably, you should use the format for an article found in an online database. Below the entry, offer a quick (one or two sentence) summary of the article’s topic and main argument.

Choose a scholarly quotation from the article; by scholarly quotation, I mean a passage from another scholarly source that the article quotes and cites. Type the quotation, including any parenthetical citation, into your document. If the quotation does not make sense out of context — most of the time because the quotation begins in the middle of a sentence — then you can include enough of the set-up for the quotation so that it does. To make this a manageable exercise, choose a quotation that is not long enough to block-quote.

Below the quotation, discuss briefly how the article uses that source. Is it a Type 1 or Type 2 quotation? (Note that I do not want Type 3 quotations for this exercise, but they are unusual and therefore unlikely.) Does the article respond to or comment after the quotation overtly, for example by saying something like “Here, Tompkins suggests” or “While this is true” ? Or does the article build on the quotation without that kind of overt rhetorical gesture? If that is the case, then removing the quotation should still create a coherence problem, a gap in logic so that the paragaph no longer fully makes sense without it. Once in a while, you may find a quotation that the article uses to make a point and then does not comment on; this is more likely if the quotation appears at the end of a paragraph, though by no means certain because sometimes the next paragraph begins or is even devoted to responding to the quotation. In any case, explain what the quotation contributes to the article and why you think the article’s author or authors thought it was necessary to their argument, or at least worthy of inclusion. Finally, provide a correct works citedor reference list entry for the source of the quotation.

Choose another quotation from the original article, or choose a cited paraphrase from it. Type the quotation or paraphrase into the document, including any necessary set-up. If the passage you are choosing is a paraphrase, make sure you include the entire paraphrase. Once you have done that, follow the same procedue as above.

The discussion of each quotation should require a short paragraph, perhaps 70-100 words.

Name the document [Last Name]-icex1 plus the doc or docx extension. For example, if your name were Dostoyevsky, you would name it Dostoyevsky-icex1.docx. When class ends, send the document directly to me at rnanian@gmu.edu as an attachment to an e-mail message.

If you follow all the instructions and complete the exercise for at least two quotations, you will earn full credit. Ignoring elements of the instructions can bring that down.