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The problem is that, particularly at the start of their studies or when returning after a long absence, students are not always sure what writing in your own words’ means. Sometimes they are even unaware of the fact that they have copied or very closely paraphrased the academic material from which they are working. If you are a student who is at all unsure about these issues, then Writing in Your Own Words is for you.
Writing in Your Own Words has been produced by the Faculty of Social Sciences to help you get to grips with the sometimes difficult task of producing academic material that is based on a thorough understanding of your sources and which you have thereby ‘made your own’. As you will see, one Of the reasons this is so important is that, when work is produced in this way, it avoids the danger of being either copied or closely paraphrased from those sources.
The booklet is divided into three main sections: Section 2 provides you with some quick reference summaries that identify what is meant by writing in your own words; why writing in your own words is important; and how to ensure that you have written using your own words. Section 3 takes you through a worked example, demonstrating what it looks like to write using your own words. This section also discusses in more detail why writing in your own words is important and how to ensure that you achieve this.
Finally, section 4 tells you how tutors (sometimes referred to as Associate Lecturers or ‘ALLS’) are likely to respond to copied, closely paraphrased or popularized work at different levels of Open University study. Clearly, you will not necessarily have to read this booklet from cover to cover. Depending on your needs, you may want to refer only to the quick reference section or to section 4. Alternatively, you may feel that you want to explore writing in your own words in more depth, in which case you will probably choose to read section 3 with some care.
However, whatever you decider it is Seibel that you will have to refer to Writing in Your Own Words at a future point in your studies. Indeed, your tutor may explicitly ask you to do this. In consequence, you are strongly recommended to file this booklet so that it can be easily retrieved. 2 Writing in your own words: an overview Learning to write using your own words is an important part of an academic education. However, as was noted in the Introduction, it is sometimes difficult to grasp exactly what ‘writing in your own words’ involves.
In order to help you in this task, you will find below some quick reference checklists identifying: what is meant by writing in your own words; why writing in your own words is important; and, how to ensure that you have written using your own words. If you want to follow up these points, you will find more detailed advice and guidance, including a worked example, in section 3. 2. 1 What is meant by ‘writing in your own words? Academic writing often involves summarizing, synthesizing analyzing or evaluating other people’s arguments.
To ‘write in your own words’ means to reflect on and digest such source material and then to discuss or redeploy this using your own vocabulary, appropriate references, and an argument hat is structured to address the specific task in hand. As this implies, writing in your own words involves much more than changing an odd word or phrase from your source material. As well as providing appropriate references, you should aim to use different vocabulary, delete superfluous points, and adapt the structure of the argument to your own purposes (for example, to address the precise demands of a tutor-marked assignment (T MA) question).
In short, you should ‘make the material your own’. It is acceptable to repeat some words or phrases, particular Larry where these are art of the technical vocabulary of the discipline. If, for illustrative purposes, you need to provide a brief quotation or to reproduce a photograph, diagram, table or similar visual aid from your source material, you should always use any necessary quotation marks or indentations (for text) and supply appropriate reference details. Guidance on quoting and referencing may be available in your course materials.
Alternatively, detailed advice can be found in Good Essay Writing: A Social Sciences Guide (Reread, 2001), while more general guidance is available in The Good Study Guide (Northerner, 1990). . 2 Why is writing in your own words so important? Putting ideas into your own words is part of the process of ‘internalizing them or making them your own. It will help clarify your understanding of these ideas, will improve your ability to recall them in the future, and will enable you to deploy them in new contexts.
The ability to explain something using your own words demonstrates your understanding of it and will allow your tutor to award marks accordingly. Using your own words demonstrates that your work is your own. Claiming someone else’s work as your own is called ‘plagiarism’ and, if done elaborately, is a serious academic offence. (For further information on the university’s policy on plagiarism, and its sanctions against it, see the Assessment Handbook. ) 2. 3 How to ensure that you have written using your own words ; Always write notes in your own words.
This will prevent them being unwittingly copied into your final piece of work without being properly attributed. Make time to check your work against your source material. Is it copied or closely paraphrased? If so, you will need to go back and revise any affected passages. Students sometimes Copy difficult material. TO avoid this, try to clarify any areas of uncertainty by discussing them in advance with fellow students and/ or your tutor. Students sometimes copy inadvertently when under abnormal pressure.
If you are under this kind of pressure, it may be in your interests, where this is permitted, to seek an extension to the cut-off date (remember to ask for this in advance of the cut-off date, however); to submit a partially finished piece of work; or, where this is permitted, to opt for substitution. You should discuss your options with your tutor before making any decision. (Guidance on requesting extensions and on substitution is available in the Assessment Handbook.
Don’t be tempted to copy deliberately. If you have a problem with the course, talk to your tutor. It is likely that she or he will be able to help you identify a better solution. 3 Exploring writing in your own words in greater depth Perhaps the best way to grasp what Writing in your own words’ involves is to explore a worked example. As you will see, the example that has been chosen is a lighthearted one. Nevertheless, it usefully illustrates what it actually means to write in your own words. 3. Writing in your own words: a worked example The following is an extract from a popular cookery book, Jamie Oliver’s The Naked Chef: If asked most people if they made risotto at home I reckon most would say ‘no’, and would think it was just Ponca restaurant food. But risottos are really meant to be cooked at home – you can prepare them easily, and can make them warming and wholesome or delicate and light. They are cheap and can be eaten all year round. Think a few restaurants bastardize the whole method and principle of risotto.
The perfect risotto should slowly ooze across the plate, not be made into a tower or a mould – the fact that it isn’t moving tells you that it’s too dry. Yuck! (Oliver, 2001 , p. 1 69) Imagine for a moment that we need to review this argument for an assessed piece of work. It is, of course, possible that Jamie Oliver’s thoughts on risottos would not be central to the overall argument we are trying to develop. As such, we might need to refer to them only in passing. For instance, we might write: Oliver (2001 , p. 69) suggests that risotto is easy to make despite the fact that it is often thought of as a dish served mainly in restaurants. In such circumstances, it is pretty easy to write using our own words. As you can see, this summary of Jamie Oliver’s argument is so brief that we could not e accused of having copied it or of having paraphrased the original too closely. If, however, the argument demands that we include a more detailed summary of Jamie Oliver’s points, our task becomes more difficult.
How do we avoid copying or closely paraphrasing the original text? There is, of course, a number of ways we could summarize the passage, but one version might look something like this: Version A: Jamie Oliver (2001 ) argues that risotto is an economical dish that is easy to cook at home, is suitable for any season and can be made so that it is either nourishing or lighter and more subtly flavored. He also argues that, while risotto is frequently thought of as what he calls ‘Ponca restaurant food’ (p. 69), restaurant-prepared versions of the dish are sometimes too dry and, as such, detract from its true character. What does this tell us about ‘writing in our own words? First, it is obvious that the paragraph summarizes Jamie Olives points. From this we can conclude that using our own words does not mean writing without reference to source materials or using only our personal experience. In fact, unless specifically told to do otherwise, your assessed work will need to summarize, Hennessey, analyses and evaluate arguments and evidence from the course itself.
As such, you will need to take care to acknowledge whose arguments are being considered. For example, you will see that Version A begins with the statement, ‘Jamie Oliver (2001 ) argues that This clearly identifies that the ideas that follow are Jamie Oliver’s and not those of the student who wrote it. Having said this, it is also clear that, while the paragraph remains true to Jamie Oliver’s original meaning, the vocabulary is substantially different, the structure of the argument has been reorganized and some less relevant mints have been omitted.
This is important because students sometimes think that ‘writing in your own words’ simply means taking a paragraph from the course and changing an odd word, omitting a couple of phrases or rearranging a number of sentences. For instance, instead of Version A, above, another student might have come up with the following, rather problematic, us mm array: Version B: Jamie Oliver argues that, if asked whether they made risotto at home, most people would say ‘no’.
This is because they think of risotto as Ponca restaurant food. However, risottos are really meant to be cooked at home. As Jamie Oliver argues, they are easy to prepare and can be made warming and wholesome or delicate and light. They are also cheap and can be eaten all the year round. Oliver goes on to suggest that some restaurants bastardize risottos. The perfect risotto, he claims, should ooze across the plate. If its in a tower or a mould and therefore not moving it is too dry.
If you compare Version B to the original extract from The Naked Chef you will see that, although it is not always copied word for word, it paraphrases the original very closely, keeping the same order of the argument and using much f the same vocabulary, sentence structure and so on. In addition, although it identifies Jamie Oliver as the author, it does not provide any reference details. As such, it could justifiably be accused of being copied. As we saw in Version A, writing in your own words is very different from this.
Rather than copying, it involves reflecting on and digesting someone else’s ideas, then producing your own interpretation of these and/or reworking them so that they address the specific task in hand (for example, answering a TAMA question). In fact, one of the best ways to ensure that you have used our own words is, first, to study your source material carefully, taking any appropriate notes as you go, and then to put this source material away. If you do this you will be forced to write using your own terms and based on your own understanding of the material.
In addition, this process will help you shape or orientate the original points to your own particular needs. Of course, this does not mean that your summary must be one hundred per cent different from the original source material. For instance, although the vocabulary used in Version A is substantially different from that in the original extract from The Naked Chef, you may have noticed that some of the words are the same. Does this matter? The short answer is, no. Most obviously, since Jamie Oliver is writing about risotto, it would be very strange if the paragraph did not mention this dish by name.
Like cooking, academic disciplines also have their own technical terms. Clearly, you 6 will often need to ‘unpack’ such technical vocabulary in order to demonstrate your understanding of the ideas that lie behind it. However, one of the skills you will be developing in the course of your studies is the ability to deploy chemical vocabulary in your own work. In consequence, you can expect to repeat technical words and phrases used in the course material as well as the odd everyday term or expression.
Finally, you will notice that the second sentence in Version A also includes a short quotation taken directly from Jamie Oliver’s original text (that is, it refers to ‘Ponca restaurant food’). Although this phrase is copied directly from the original it is clearly signaled as a quotation by the use of single inverted commas and by the page reference immediately following it. Quotations like this are often used as evidence to support an argument or to illustrate or amplify a particular point. In this case, the quotation marks also serve to warn the reader that Jamie Oliver’s choice of vocabulary would not necessarily be the writers own.
It is perfectly acceptable to use quotations of this kind so long as you follow the standard conventions for quoting written material (that is, you place quoted text in single inverted commas or, for longer quotations, in a separate paragraph indented at the left margin; and you reference your source). As mentioned in section 2. 1 above, guidance on use of quotations and preferences may be available in your course materials. Alternatively, detailed advice can be found in Good Essay Writing: A Social Sciences Guide (Reread, 2001), while more general advice is available in The Good Study Guide (Northerner, 1990).
Again as mentioned in section 2. 1, as well as written quotations, you may sometimes need to use photographs, maps, diagrams, tables or other visual material in order to illustrate or amplify a point, or as evidence to support an argument. Once again, this is perfectly acceptable so long as you clearly reference your source. However, whenever quoting written or visual material, oh should make sure that the quotation supports rather than replaces your own argument.
In other words, you will need to show how and why a particular table, map, or short written extract is important to your own argument rather than assuming that it will do your work for you. 3. 2 Why is writing in your own words so important? Some Why is it so important to use your own words in academic writing? As was previously summarized in section 2. 2, there are three main reasons for this: 1 Putting an argument into your own words clarifies your understanding of it. The fact of the matter is that, in the process of putting someone else’s argument into your own words, you will be forced to get to grips with it.
For example, you may have noticed in everyday life occasions when, although you think you have understood something, you have subsequently found it difficult to explain this point to someone else. Academic work is much the same. It is the process of explaining something that clarifies your understanding of it and helps you ‘internalize’ it. Thus, if you simply copy something, it is likely that you will have only half digested it. However, if you put it into your own words – if, in effect, you explain it to yourself or someone else -? the likelihood is that it will start to make more sense.