In-Text Citations for Research Paper

As I reminded you in class today, you must include in-text citations for all ideas that are not considered common knowledge about your research paper topic. That means that you need to include citations for direct quotations as well as paraphrased information.


In-text citations can include signal phrases that indicate the work being cited or the author in parenthesis at the end of the sentence.


Online websites will help you with proper citations for your paper. Click here to see an example of an in-text citation and its corresponding works cited entry.

Help for Works Cited and In-text Citations

All students must know how to properly cite in MLA format because all paragraphs will have in-text citations to indicate the source of your information. Remember that you have to cite all ideas that you found in your research, or you are guilty of plagiarism.

All students also need to know how to make a works cited entry so that you can provide all of the necessary information to your Works Cited leader.

The EHS Media Center page has some great links to websites that will help you prepare a works cited page in proper MLA format. The links there will also help you create accurate in-text citations.

English 10 Book is Your 9th Source

Remember that the introduction to the paper needs to make a textual connection to one of the books read in third quarter--Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, or Night by Elie Wiesel (we read that the week before spring break).

The works cited page creator must include the book cited in the introduction on the works cited page. That will be your group's 9th required source. If you cite Wikipedia, that would be your 10th source.

Do one blog post on research topic by Monday

My Monday, March 16, you should have completed at least one blog post on a credible source on your research paper topic. You will have a brief group meeting to discuss your multi-flow map(s) and see where you need to do further research. For example, we discovered today that we really needed more research on the causes of the conflict in Kashmir. I have posted the passwords for the school's online databases on Edline. If you use Infotrac, Proquest or SIRS, you know that you will have credible sources.

Multi-Flow Map Model for Research Paper

Congratulations on a great discussion today on the conflict in Kashmir and the causes and effects. I hope that you found that determining causes and effects from one source, even a short Newsweek article, was easy to do. I also hope that you found a way to avoid plagiarism by putting your ideas into a multi-flow map and then writing a summary. Just think how easy the research paper will be to complete if every group member uses the same cause & effect thinking and organizes ideas from their sources in a multi-flow map.

If you want to see a full-screen version of the Kashmir multi-flow map, simply click on the image.

Ideally, your two blog posts on your research paper topic will both have used Thinking Maps software to summarize information and provide a visual for your group members. The paper would practically write itself if every member did this.

The other great outcome of today was how you took the details from the text and made them into big ideas for the multi-flow map. If we had time, we would have written those direct quotes that led you to those big ideas in the frame of the map. When you are using an Internet source, you can copy and paste those supporting quotations into the frame of your map. Just remember to use quotation marks so that you know that you lifted the ideas or you may forget and end up being guilty of plagiarism.

To make a frame with Thinking Maps software, simply click the icon on the left side that shows "add a frame" when you hover over it. Then you will get an icon in the left-hand toolbar that allows you to add text to the frame.

Thanks Anna for making the map in class today.

If you want to read the article on Kashmir, click here to go to the Newsweek online version.

Number of Sources Needed for Research

Your group will need to incorporate at least eight credible sources into your research paper, and Wikipedia will not count as one of those sources. Someone may summarize and paraphrase the Wikipedia entry as a blog post, and if you use that information in the paper, you will need to cite Wikipedia. However, Wikipedia needs to be the ninth source.

With four-member groups, each person only needs to complete two blog posts on your topic--if the sources are from reliable sources (SIRS, Infotrac, credible universities and news agencies) and contain enough information for people to use.

You may also use upcoming outside reading blog posts as a two for one assignment. If you look at your blogging assignments sheet, you will notice that the English 10 teachers purposefully put some topics that would somewhat overlap with your research issues. Post # 11 (global issue), #12 (imperialism), and #13 (war) might apply to your research paper topic. If you do use an outside reading post for one of your two research posts, simply indicate Research blog #1/Outside reading blog#13 on the post so that I can see where you are using a two-fer.

Remember that all outside reading blogs and all research paper blogs need to have MLA citation and a hot link to the original Internet source.