2 Academic practice and referencing
When writing an exam, essay or published text, it is likely that you will base your own writing on source material. This is other peoples’ texts, statistics, images and similar that contribute to your argument. When writing in your target language, you may also use a dictionary to look up words – or OMT.
It is good practice to mention any support you have used when producing your text, so that the reader can clearly see how your own ideas and skills referred to in your work have evolved from knowledge you have gained from other sources. In many cases, for example at university, stating clearly which sources you have used (‘referencing’) is not only good practice, but it is a prerequisite to avoid being accused of poor academic practice or even plagiarism.
Referencing is done in two places within a text: in the main body of the text, when paraphrasing or directly quoting a source (in-text citation), and at the end of the text, when you provide a bibliography – sometimes also called a ‘reference list’ – that contains all the sources you have used.
In academic writing, there are rules for referencing a source correctly so the reader is able to understand where a quote or idea comes from. You will look at how to reference OMT in the next section.