4.1: Introduction

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Gabriel Winer & Elizabeth Wadell
Berkeley City College & Laney College via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative (OERI)

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What will we learn in this chapter?

In this chapter, you will learn how to use evidence from other sources to support an argument. You will learn about different types of evidence and how to choose the most effective for your topic. In addition, you will learn how to effectively quote, summarize, or paraphrase the outside information and connect it to your own ideas. Lastly, you will learn how to cite the information that you are using to support your argument and avoid plagiarism.

Why is this important?

Most academic writing is based on using other texts (books, articles, films, etc.) to support a point; in other words, you need to use other people's writing as proof or evidence of your own argument. To make your own argument more persuasive, you need to be able to choose the best evidence from your sources and smoothly connect it to your own ideas. However, it is also important to show where your information comes from. This will make your own writing more persuasive by showing where you got your information and allowing your readers to check it themselves; even more importantly, it shows your "academic honesty" and that you are not trying to claim that something is your own idea when you learned it from another source.

What theme will this chapter focus on?

What does your native language mean to you? In this chapter, we will look at native languages and the importance of maintaining them. Sometimes when immigrants arrive in the United States, they feel pressure to stop using their home language in order to assimilate into their new home. People who arrive as children may not yet have very much formal education in their first language, and in the rush to learn English, they miss out on the opportunity to become fluently bilingual. But maintaining home languages is important for academic, cultural, social, and emotional reasons. School systems and state and local governments have long argued about the best way to educate multilingual students. The readings in this chapter explore this theme.

A person speaks at a school board meeting — Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Standing up for Bilingual and Public Education by Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association is licensed under CC-BY-NC 2.0

Learning objectives

In this chapter, you will learn to

evaluate and select appropriate text evidence to support your points.
integrate quotations and paraphrases using MLA citation style.
introduce and analyze evidence to connect it to your own ideas.
compose essays that avoid plagiarism.
format papers in MLA style.

Licenses and Attributions

CC Licensed Content: Original

Authored by Annie Agard, Laney College. License: CC BY NC.