Campus Learning & Writing Centers

SafeAssign: Using SafeAssign to Teach Direct Quoting

Direct word-for-word quoting is not complicated for students generally, but writing with style and with sophistication when quoting is another matter. Students with little experience writing from sources frequently rely too heavily on block quotes that are too long. These long quotations often contain extraneous material that obscures the overall point the student is trying to make by referencing the quote. Students who rely too heavily on long block quotes lack the ability to manipulate source material to meet their own writing and thinking needs. The SafeAssign report can offer an interesting visual representation for students to see how heavily they are relying on block quotes and how successful they are at weaving quoted material into their own text with style and sophistication.

Assignment: Summary or Abstract with Quotes

Students can be asked to write a summary or abstract of one or more articles in the SafeAssign database using both paraphrase and direct quoting. Explain to students the methods for modifying quoted material to omit unnecessary details (with ellipsis) or to make the quotation fit more smoothly into the student’s base text (with brackets). Challenge students to write in such a way as to integrate and weave all quoted material into their own text, using appropriate author attribution and in-text citation as well. Because the SafeAssign report will highlight directly quoted material, the student will be able to easily evaluate how well she has managed to weave source work into her base writing.

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Also in this section:

• Incorporating SafeAssign into the Classroom
• Using SafeAssign to Teach Paraphrasing
• Using SafeAssign to Teach Direct Quoting
• Using SafeAssign to Teach Student-to-Source Ratio