9 Summary

This week you have looked at critical reading and have been introduced to ways in which students can use the ideas and the information they found in their readings when writing essays.

These are the key learning points:

• Reading critically consists in asking yourself questions about the content of the text, its reliability and objectivity.

• In everyday life, it is common to report information from various sources.

• University students use information and ideas from their readings in their assignments.

• Information from sources can be summarised, paraphrased and quoted.

• Referencing is a way to acknowledge the authors of the ideas and words students use in their own text.

• Plagiarism is passing off other people’s work as your own.

• To avoid plagiarism it is necessary to reword the original text and to acknowledge its author with an in-text citation and an end-of-text reference.

You can now go to Week 3 [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .