MLA Style & 6 Types of Evidence
We are talking research as we gear up for Project #1. But I wanted to remind you that when you are considering the research, that you do not forget your most valuable source for this paper - the work of fiction you are exploring. You need to be very familiar with this work of fiction because you are expected to cite evidence from that work of fiction to back up your research and vice versa. Remember, the work of fiction will be your paper's 11th citation on your Works Cited page. If you have not read, viewed or experienced your work of fiction in the past week, you should do that now. Don't forget that FSU has an incredible library system which can get most things for you for free.
Back to research: now that you are an expert in using the FSU databases, it is possible for you to determine if you have discovered a useful source for your assignment or not. For Project #1 you are investigating a research question. You need to look at all sides of the question to make sure you are approaching your paper with an unbiased and objective point of view. When you write the paper, you will need evidence of the information you find. This evidence will come from at least 10 Peer Reviewed sources which you will use for your paper. All 10 should be used in the paper and all 10 should appear on the Works Cited page.
Sources which you will use for this project need to be
Credible
Accurate
Reliable
Support the data
Basically sources which are jam-packed with ethos. Peer-Reviewed sources are articles which have been published in reputable journals by experts in the field. Not only are they written by experts, but they have been reviewed by experts to make sure the information is accurate. This is why I ask you to find them and use them in your Project #1. If you don't know if your publication is peer-reviewed, Google it!
(Note: some students accidentally click "review" instead of peer-reviewed. "Reviews" are not acceptable because they are a writer's opinion in regards to the quality of the work of fiction.)
Some of the research you discover will be useful for your project in that you can use the source for your paper (It is peer-reviewed and it has good information for your research question). In other instances, you may come across research which will lead you to better research. Your job as a researcher is to determine what is a useful source, what is not useful, and what you can learn from both in order to find better sources. Use these 6 categories to determine what type of source and evidence you have located and how it can be apply it to your research question.
1. Tertiary Sources (or General Sources) Tertiary sources are the preliminary sources which you use to get a feel for your topic. Tertiary (General) sources are helpful for learning the terminology around your area of research and learn what questions other people are asking about this topic. Tertiary research should NOT be in your paper. Examples would be: Dictionaries, Wikipedia, eHow, Google answers, basically anything which appears on the first page of search results on Google. None of these sources should appear on your Works Cited page. In the past, you may have been told that websites which end in .org, .edu or .gov are acceptable sources for research. However, .org websites can be purchased. That doesn't make a website credible. A few semesters ago, a student referenced an article she found on an .org site as evidence for her paper. The article on the .org site that she used was a satirical news source like The Onion. She trusted the .org and used their information, which was false information. These are the things to be careful about. Don't make assumptions about credibility because of a url. Also, newspapers are not as credible as peer-reviewed journals because the information which journalists obtain is constantly changing. Watch how a news event develops in real-time while watching the TV news. The same happens with newspapers. Sometimes a reader will need to read 10 articles on one event before the big picture is visible. (The entire plot of the movie Spotlight is how the staff had been reporting on an abuse scandal the whole time, but in such small pieces that the big picture was not visible to them). Use newspapers as tertiary sources.
2. Anecdotal Anecdotal is when the evidence comes from a personal testimonial or narrative. You exchange anecdotal evidence often when you tell your friends about a friend who had something happen to them. First-hand accounts. #truestory. These testimonials not only rely on what the person experienced but how they felt about what they experiences, which makes their information incredibly susceptible to their emotions. Eye-witness testimony is no longer admissible in court because of this. One person's experience would be completely different than another person's experience.
3. Expert Testimony Expert testimony is different from anecdotal because it is not based on a narrative but on the opinions and perspectives from an expert in the field of study. Can you trust it? Depend on the expert. Google the person who is providing this testimony. Read their wikipedia page. See if their "testimony" is consistently disputed.
4. Analogical Remember the analogy section on the SAT and ACT Verbal sections?
Analogical sources work in a similar way. The source does not apply to your question, but enough connections can be made that a similar scenario can be applied. When you are using these sources, you are asking your reader to agree with your comparisons and conclusions, so make sure they are applicable. Watch out for logical fallacies and forcing a connection which does not exist. For example, a composer might be able to connect Instagram use information to Snapchat use because they are both social media platforms which use visual modes. However, connecting Snapchat to Facebook would not be analogous because of differences in text-based modes versus visual modes, differences of audience, and differences in purposes.
5. Documentary/Summary Documentary/Summary are sources which provide the who, what, when, where and why an event occurred. You will find these in magazine articles, newspaper articles, historical writing, and non-fiction books. Example: Alexander Hamilton biography by Ron Chernow
6. Statistical Articles where the research produces results which can be quantitated. These typically focus on numbers and figures. Example: Psychological Studies or Physics articles.
Sometimes when you locate several sources which claim the same information, you can note that these sources corroborate. You can also classify these sources in a category for your notes-- Corroborative: the experts agree on this information.
Don't neglect the Works Cited pages on the good sources you find. Research the articles and information they cite and see if it leads you to additional sources.
Primary Sources are the original composition which you are working with. For Project #1 you are asked to pick a long work of fiction and apply a research question to it. The work of fiction you select is your Primary Source. As stated above, it should appear on your Works Cited page, but does not count toward the 10 Peer-Reviewed Source requirement. (You should have a minimum of 11 sources on your Works Cited).
Now that you know how to categorize sources, how do you look at each one critically to know if it is a useful source for this project?
Ask yourself:
Does the information in the source generate additional research questions?
Does it take you deeper into your research?
Does it provide something new or helpful?
Be sure to look up the author of the article on Google. Find out what else they have written or published. Find out if they have been discredited.
Read the article. Does the author present sufficient evidence to support their claims? Remember: Evidence is facts, examples, sources, citations that authors use to illustrate and support each point they make in a composition. You are going to be using these sources as your evidence, so you will need to make sure their evidence is good.
Is the author spending more time persuading than presenting facts and data? Does the writer make statements which don't quite seem true? Does the author spend more time telling a narrative (story) than providing evidence?
Does the writer seem to be speaking to a specific audience? Is the language informal?
Is the information timely? Sometimes medical studies will be discredited over time. Make sure the evidence is still relevant.
How easily can you tell where the author found their information? Who is the author's sources?
If the author does not provide source material (references, works cited page, direct quotes from on the record interviews) the source is not credible.
Now, let's talk about MLA style. When putting together Project #1, you are REQUIRED to include a Works Cited page in MLA style. The Works Cited page is different from the Annotated Bibliography in that it does not have the annotations. An example of this is available on the Purdue Owl. When putting together the Annotated Bibliography, you may have learned that putting together a correct citation is a tedious process. You might have been tempted to put together your Works Cited page with Easy Bib. Easy Bib is consistently WRONG. RefWorks and Zotoro are more accurate, but you can't completely trust these either. My advise is if you are going to use a generator for your sources, go back and double check them to make sure they are correct. Generate but Verify. Again, I count off for incorrect citation. The students who nail the Works Cited page, are the ones who assemble it without the generator.
Typically MLA citations look like this:
Author Last name, Author First name. "Name of article". Title of website or Journal. Publisher,
Date, Page Number or City it was Published.
How do you know when to Italicize and when to put in quotations?
Think about your sources as either containers or something inside a container. As a Cookie Jar or a Cookie. A container (the Cookie Jar) is in Italics and the things inside the container (the cookies) are in Quotation Marks. An album is a container which means it is Italicized, but the songs are inside the container so they are in quotation marks. A television series is a container (Orphan Black) but the individual episodes are within that container ("Endless Forms Most Beautiful"). A Website, like your Wix page, is a Cookie Jar (BuzzFeed) but the "About me" page is a cookie (Quotation marks). A Peer-Reviewed Journal is a container which should be Italicized. The articles inside the journal are placed in quotation marks, because they are cookies. Sometimes when searching for Peer Reviewed sources, you will find a Peer Reviewed article online, but it was originally printed in the Journal. Follow the MLA guidelines for a Journal, not a website. Don't include the web address with your citations. The MLA guidelines show it both ways, I prefer not to have them on the Works Cited, specifically because the links often don't work unless you are logged into an FSU account.
How do you cite things in the paragraph? When you are writing your paper, and you use information from your sources, you MUST cite the information so the reader will know where the information originated. This is when you will use in-text citations. Whether you are summarizing, paraphrasing or direct quoting, at the end of the information you add (Author last name page number). It will look like this: (Bradley 5). The parentheses sits outside the quotation marks and before the period.
For example: "Citations are important" (Bradley 5).
Bradley claims that citations are important (5).
Don't Forget:
Your Annotated Bibliography is due before 11:59 pm on MONDAY SEPT. 16. Upload it to your P1 Wix page as a Pdf, not a Word doc.
Don't forget Office Hours are Wednesday and Thursday between 2pm and 4pm. Make an Appointment and call in via Google Hangout.
