Resources on Sourcework

Teaching FWS students how to engage with and effectively write about source material can be one of the most important things we do as FWS instructors. From documentation to voice, from selecting passages to deciding when and how to paraphrase or quote them, from summary to analysis, etc., it can be difficult to know where to start and when to end the lesson, and how to best frame sourcework as the kind of conversation that assuredly extends beyond a single writing course that is situated within a specific discipline as yours and mine are. 

I have linked below two of my favorite online resources, resources that I hope you'll share with students so that they can return to them semester after semester as they contemplate the ways that their work with sources changes when they write in different disciplinary, professional, and public contexts and as they become different thinkers.

I also hope that you will consider if and how you might use these resources to design classroom activities that give students opportunities to work with you and each other to explore and reinforce strategies and best practices. The most challenging aspect of teaching sourcework at the college level, I have found, is not providing adequate training in mechanics (although that is what is most often taught and often exclusively taught), but rather helping students make the transition to a different mindset, the scholarly habit of mind that requires them to not (just) "write about" source material, but to "write with" source material.

Tracy Hamler Carrick



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