Thread: Teaching proper use of Quotation

I did have a college professor once who entered the room, dropped a butterknife, a sock and a hammer on the desk and said something like, "Well, there's the evidence. Can't you see who did it? " or something. She was pointing out, using a court room analogy, that we need to explain our evidence. We can't just sprinkle our papers with quotes, we have to explain the evidence to the judge (her). It was cute and made an impression, though I'd suggest you don't bring ANY knife! I don't remember all her details, but I do remember it was an "aha!" moment for me.

Are you talking about teaching just how to introduce the quotes, or are they needing to work on what to quote in the first place? 'Cause, if they're quoting, y'know, those little facts that could've been stated in their own words and simply cited with footnotes or whatever, it probably makes them harder to introduce fluently. Stress fluency of ideas. If they can demonstrate and recognize their own fluent thought process, fluency of words should come more easily.

Exactly what kind of writing are they doing? And what level are they?

They are college freshmen. Too early to teach footnotes. I just like to give them a lesson on how to make their use of quotes effective.

A lot of students at that level just throw them in there and assume the evidence speaks for itself. Or, they put in a qoute, and then paraphrase the quote without illustrating how it contributes to their argument.

I think I'm going to use it. Maybe I'll substitute the knife with a rope I'll let you know how it goes!