41 Week 7: Choose Your own Citation Adventure (Research Assignment)
Now that you’ve learned more about concepts surrounding intellectual property, citation practices, and plagiarism, this is a chance for you to practice your own citation skills. Please read the following instructions and guidelines carefully before beginning your work on this assignment. If you have any questions, post to our Course Questions discussion forum on Blackboard so that your classmates can also benefit from the information shared.
- Choose one citation style to focus on: APA or MLA. Select the one that you feel is most pertinent to your major or academic path. If you’re not sure which citation style to choose, email me by Friday and I’ll be happy to help you figure out which would be most beneficial for you.
- Depending on the citation style you choose, visit the Seneca Libraries APA or MLA Citation Guide (links provided below). Each guide contains useful information about the citation style, citation examples, and sample paper layouts.
-
- APA Citation Guide: http://seneca.libguides.com/apa
- MLA Citation Guide: http://seneca.libguides.com/mla
-
- Within the citation guide you’ve chosen to follow, please focus on the following areas (also illustrated in the screenshot below):
- “What is APA?” or “What is MLA?”
- “Commonly Used Terms”
- “How Do I Cite?” (citation examples for a variety of sources — e.g., books, articles, and websites)
- “In-Text Citation” (how to cite your sources within papers and presentations)
- “Reference List & Sample Paper” (APA) or “Works Cited List & Sample Paper” (MLA)
- Using the MLA or APA style, create citations for the following types of sources related to your chosen research topic, or the topic you have been exploring this term:
-
- One scholarly journal article
- One newspaper or magazine article
- One print or e-book
- One quality website
- Refer to the Seneca Libraries MLA or APA guide (referenced on the previous page) to help you develop your citations, and feel free to email me with any questions you have.
- You may create citations for sources you’ve used in previous assignments for this class (refer back to your book, article, and Internet exploration assignments). You will also be able to use these citations for your final project next week.
- Please submit your 4 practice citations as a Word or PDF document.
I don’t want you to agonize over your citations. Simply do your best. I will be grading on effort, not perfection. The idea is for you to become more comfortable creating citations. Due to all the rules involved with properly citing sources, it takes a good deal of practice to become proficient, so please be patient with yourself. If you are feeling overwhelmed, please email me so that I can assist you; just please be sure to email me by the Friday evening before the assignment deadline on Sunday to allow me enough time to respond.