Academic Summary

Academic Summary: The use of Haiku in the Classroom

Iida (2010) in his article “Developing Voice by Composing Haiku: A Social-Expressivist Approach for Teaching Haiku Writing in EFL Contexts” states that the social expressivist approach to writing is encouraging the teaching of Haikus in EFL classrooms. Haiku is a kind of poetry composed of three lines which facilitates students to contact their feelings and express them by describing nature and human behavior. It helps to increase students´ vocabulary and to develop their writing skills. Furthermore, it stimulates students to find their own voice considering the audience.

Haiku has some special features such as a syllable pattern, a seasonal reference and a cutting word or punctuation mark which divides the Haiku in two independent pieces and fosters reflection on both parts and the Haiku as unity. Because of these and due to the audience, each Haiku is free of interpretation. (Iida, 2010)

Reading Haiku is the first stage to introduce this type of poetry into the classroom (Iida, 2010). By analyzing structures, discovering meaning and interpreting them, students can be aware of the writer´s voice. By sharing free and multiple interpretations students will negotiate meaning with other members of the audience and the author.

Secondly, students should compose their own Haikus. Instructions should be open, clear and simple. According to Iida (2010), after reviewing the concept of Haiku and its features, students go to the outside world to hear and observe. They compose by using their impression, the correct use of words, wording and the possible use of synonyms. Peer reading helps to discover meaning and to see the impact of them. Afterwards, students are requested to collect important memories, so as to write a haiku about them. It is very important to foster writing fluency than grammatical accuracy.

Lastly, Iida (2010) states that to show students´ haikus increase the possibility to find new audiences to interpret students´ productions, not only peers and teachers in the classroom context. (p. 33)

Through the introduction of Haiku in the classroom students will achieve the use of their own voices, and awareness of audience.  The usage of the speaker´s discourse influenced by his life´s story, experiences and culture encourages the growth of literacy and critical thinking.

References

 Iida, A. (2010).  Developing Voice by Composing Haiku: A Social-Expressivist Approach for Teaching Haiku Writing in EFL Contexts. English Teaching Forum, Nbr. 1. DOI: EJ914886

APA style: in-text citations

Analysis of in-text citations in a piece of writing

According to APA (American Psychological Association) style (APA, 2010), there are three types of in- text citations: paraphrases, direct quote and block quotations. This paper will analyse the use of these three resources of avoiding plagiarism in the article “Developing Voice by Composing Haiku: A Social-Expressivist Approach for Teaching Haiku Writing in EFL Contexts” (Iida, 2010)

In this article, block quotations are not included. The author used direct quotes and paraphrasing. Direct quotes requirements are “to include the author, year of publication, and the page number for the reference (preceded by "p.")” (Prudue Owl, In-text citations: The basics, Short Quotations, para 1).  In Iida (2010)  no page number is found at the end of the quotes.

As regards paraphrase quotes, most of them are introduced by the same signal phrase “according to”. Paraphrase quotes are characterized by the name of the author, a comma and the year of publication. In this case, the quotes illustrated do not show a comma for separating author and year of publication. Number page is not displayed in most of the quotes, but “APA guidelines encourage you to also provide the page number (although it is not required.)” (Prudue Owl, In-text citations: The basics, Summary or paraphrase, para 1).   “For three, four or five authors, cite all authors in the first instance, thereafter, only first author followed by "et al." (not underlined and with no stop after "et") and the year of publication” (University of Southern Quensland, n.d Paraphrasing). In the article the group of authors is not named for the first time, they are grouped by the use of “et” after the main author.

To conclude, although all the sources appear in the reference list, Iida (2010) does not completely follow the rules of APA style of quoting and making a reference in this article.

References

American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association(6th ed.). Washington, DC.  

 Iida, A. (2010).  Developing Voice by Composing Haiku: A Social-Expressivist Approach for Teaching Haiku Writing in EFL Contexts. English Teaching Forum, Nbr. 1. DOI: EJ914886

Purdue OWL (2013). In-text citations: the basics, Short Quotations. Retrieved October 2013, from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/02/

University of Suthern Quensland (n.d) APA Referecing guide  Retrieved October 2013, from  http://www.usq.edu.au/library/referencing/apa-referencing-guide#How_to_cite_references_within_the_text_of_an_assignment

Writing a Critique

Critique to a Book of Academic Writing

The book Academic Writing: A Handbook for international students written by Bailey (2006) aims at overseas students to develop academic writing skills when studying at colleges or universities of all subjects and levels (Bailey, 2006, p. vii). It is a practical writing course which fosters students’ academic writing styles either for the classroom or for self-study. Each topic consists of simple explanations, some examples and elementary practice. This book might be worthy for some students but it may have some inconsistencies from what the author expects and what it really portrays.

Bailey´s book (2006) is organized in different parts, all connected by cross-sectional references. In Part 1 “Writing Process”, the book guides students into the process of writing from sentences to general organization. In Part 2 “Elements of Writing” the topics lead students to acquiring writing skills; in Part 3 “Accuracy in Writing” students practice grammatical issues while in Part 4 “Writing models” the book shows different samples of the most common types of academic writing. There is also a “Writing Test” section for checking progress and “Answers” on the exercises can be found as the last segment of the book.

Bailey (2006) challenges college or university students from foundation to PhD to adopt the book, but many of the topics dealt might be already well known for students who have introduce themselves in the grounds of academic writing such as “Nouns- Countable and Uncountable” (part 3.10 p. 147) or “Confusing Pairs” (part 3. 6 p. 136). In addition, some topics and skills that academic students need to improve are not described or, they are not deeply enough developed in Bailey (2006) such as Reference and Quotations (part 2.11 p. 99) as well as Cohesion (part 2.3 p. 73) .The book mostly aims at essay writing; therefore some widely used academic genres are not included in part 4. Only formal letter, a CV (curriculum vitae) and two examples of essays does the book contain, so, students are not exposed to academic summaries, reviews, reports, critiques, articles, among others.

As regards the book´s presentation and format, students might face some difficulties in finding and relating topics. Bailey (2006) states that students “can work either with the teacher or by themselves” (p. vii), but this would have been possible for students who had known their academic needs beforehand and who had a teacher for guiding their improvements. Students working alone would find no suitable answer for some writing exercises (Paraphrasing 1.16; Combining sources 1.10; Argument  2.1) moreover, no guiding or further explanation for some topics, for instance “Academic Vocabulary” (part 3.2 p. 124) and the use of “other text features” (part 1.1 p. 4). It would have also been better if Bailey (2006) had shown the table of contents and topics relating according to students needs and not “alphabetically for easy access” as he assumes.

This book might be really useful for those language competent students who are introduced in academic writing. Some topics are simple shown and preliminary developed, so further practice and examples would be needed for those who attempt proficient levels. If it would have been easy-to-follow as it had been proposed by the author a teacher might not be necessary, but guiding must be essential. I would not recommend this book as a self-study course for either very weak or highly proficient students. And, as Brown and Yule (1983, cited in Ansary and Babaii, 2013) “materials should be chosen, not so much on the basis of their own interest, but for what they can be used to do”(p. 9). Therefore, materials become good materials when students and teachers make them profitable enough for their goals.

References

Bailey, S. (2006). Academic Writing: A handbook for international students.  (2^nd edition). Retrieved November 2013 from   http://npu.edu.ua/!e-book/book/djvu/A/iif_kgpm_t27.pdf

Ansary, H., & Esmat, B. (2013).  Universal Characteristics of EFL/ESL Textbooks: A step towards systematic textbook evaluation. Shiraz University. Retrieved November 2013 from

http://cluster1.cafe.daum.net/_c21_/bbs_search_read?grpid=17sno&fldid=O7eD&contentval=000QDzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz&nenc=&fenc=&q=&nil_profile=cafetop&nil_menu=sch_updw

Analysing APA style

APA (American Psychological Association) Style in a Piece of Writing

Members of the discourse community must follow certain rules in order to achieve academic writing skills. The American Psychological Association (APA, 2010) proposes pre-established academic conventions for formatting and writing style as well as citations and reference lists.  (Prudue OWL, 2013 para 1). The aim of this paper is to analyse how Dalvit, Murray, Terzoli, & Zhao, 2005 article follows some established conventions of APA style of writing such as quotations, signal phrases and reference list.

As regards in-text citations, APA style might be verified in different aspects of the text: in-text citations, signal phrases and reference list.  The authors Dalvit et al (2005) only included paraphrased in-text citations identified by an optional signal phrase, followed by a surname and date in between brackets, however, page number of the quote is omitted.  In the article, there is no evidence of direct quotes or block quotations.  In addition, the sources stated are varied, article´s evidence is supported by books, publications done by universities and websites; and online dictionaries and journals; and they are all acceptably pointed out in the reference list.

In view of APA style (2010), signal phrases are used to lead quoted or cited material; but in this article, they are barely used and repeated along the text. “According” and “According to” are written to introduce the citation, which are quite similar. This may show a lack of academic competence from the authors or it could have been required by the article´s publishing house.

Considering reference lists according to APA style (2010), they must appear at the end of the body of the paper in a new page. The title “References” must be centered- aligned, not in bold, underlined or italics. (Prudue Owl, 2013a, para 2). However, in the article analyzed, these requirements are not fully accomplished. The reference list is not in a new page, the title is on bold followed by colon and not properly aligned. APA style, has also established that all “the sources that appear in the article, must be cited alphabetically in the reference list” (Prudue Owl, 2013a, para 1).  This is attained by the authors, but they enumerated each source and they did not respect the double spacing necessary, in the reference list and throughout the text. The sources are indented and cited in the correct order: surnames, initials names, year of publication followed by the title.

As regards reference construction, titles and names of the books are in italics, while APA style suggests that only names of books and journals should be italicized (University of Minnesota, n.d). Online books are not cited with author, although if there is not one, it might start with the title (University of Southern Quensland, n.d). Besides, the signal phrases “available from” or “retrieved” are also missing, so as to indicate the date and the link, since there is no evidence of DOI. Furthermore, the reference to the online dictionary must reveal the entry word at the beginning of the cite, nonetheless in both allusions entry words are not mentioned.

So as to conclude, the article written by Dalvit et al, 2005 follows most of the requirements presented by APA 2010 style of writing. It attempts to be an academic piece of writing but it reveals some inconsistencies as regards APA style conventions, mainly in the reference list, although there is a worthy implementation of quotes. Therefore it does not completely fulfill academic rules of APA (2010) sixth edition style of writing.

References

American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association(6th ed.). Washington, DC.  

Dalvit, L., Murray, S., Terzoli, A., Zhao, X., Rhodes University, Mini, B., & University of Fort Hare. (2005). Providing increased access to English L2 students of computer science at a South African University. US-China Education Review, Sep. 2005, Vol. 2 (9).

Purdue OWL (2013). APA style workshop Retrieved October 2013,

 https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/664/01/

Purdue OWL (2013a). Reference List: Basic Rules. Retrieved October 2013, from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/05/

University of Minnesota Center for Writing. (n.d.). Quicktips: APA documentation style: Reference list. University of Minnesota: Student Writing Support. Retrieved October 2013, from http://writing.umn.edu/sws/assets/pdf/quicktips/apa_References.pdf

University of Suthern Quensland (n.d) APA Referecing guide  Retrieved October 2013, from  http://www.usq.edu.au/library/referencing/apa-referencing-guide#How_to_cite_references_within_the_text_of_an_assignment