Integrating Evidence and APA Formatting in Career Narrative Essay

Step 1: Finding and Quoting General Sources

Last week, you completed a working draft of your Career Narrative Essay. This week, you will focus on discussing social change, integrating evidence to support your ideas, and developing your writing voice (the way your words sound to the reader). Click the link below for information about tone of voice: Walden Writing Center. (2020). Scholarly Voice: Tone.  This week’s revision activity will help you integrate supporting evidence into your Career Narrative Essay working draft. Step 1: Find a general source and quote it. (click to expand/reduce) General sources are those that are targeted toward a general audience, meaning no specialized knowledge is needed to understand them. Magazines, newspapers, and webpages are considered general sources. They rarely go through the peer review process, where a source is evaluated by experts in the field. This means that the information has been checked to make sure it is accurate. General sources do not go through the peer review process and could be biased or downright false. It is always good to double-check evidence and evaluate facts when you use general sources. General sources are best used within an essay’s introduction or conclusion. Follow the steps below in order: 1. Open your favorite search engine. Type in search words or phrases that tie in with your career path, goals, or social change. For example, you might type in “nursing and social change” (these are search words), or you might type in “how social work benefits society” (this is a search phrase). Note: You completed the same process in this week’s discussion. If you found a good quote in Part B of your post, feel free to add it to the paragraph of your essay where it fits best. 2. Find a quote which captures your attention. 3. Look carefully at your Week 3 Career Narrative Essay working draft. Find the paragraph where the quote fits best. Within the paragraph, place the quote where it most logically fits. Underline the quote. 4. Introduce the quote. Some common introductory phrases include “according to… the author states… she writes…” and so on. Never have a quote stand as a sentence by itself! Instead, include a sentence or phrase that prepares the reader for the quote. Click the link for information about quoting. 5. Include a narrative or parenthetical citation to identify the specific source you quoted. Make sure you look at this resource carefully. Giving credit to sources is an essential part of writing with evidence. Click the link for information about narrative and parenthetical citations. 6. Immediately follow the quote with an explanation of the message or main idea you want your reader to understand. Remember, we all interpret quotes differently, so think about why this quote is important, how you want your reader to interpret it, and how it supports the ideas you are making within the paragraph. Step 2: Use Google Scholar to find an academic source and summarize it. (click to expand/reduce) The difference between Google, or another internet browser search engine, and Google Scholar is that Google Scholar limits searches to scholarly literature available on the Internet and provides access to full text sources, including books and journal articles. Note: Google Scholar is not perfect, and some sources cost money. You need to look at each source carefully to ensure that it is credible (trustworthy), unbiased, and free of charge. Follow the numbered steps below in order: 1. Go to this weblink: https://scholar.google.com/. Feel free to bookmark Google Scholar, as you will be doing research and writing papers throughout your educational journey. Type in search words or phrases that tie in with your career path, goals, or social change. For example, you might type in “nursing and social change” (these are search words), or you might type in “how social work benefits society” (this is a search phrase). Look carefully at the results and find a source you would like to summarize and use within a paragraph of your Career Narrative Essay working draft. Summarizing shows a higher level of critical thinking than quoting because you must condense the author’s main ideas and/or claim into a few sentences that are written in your own voice (using your own words). Click the link for information about summarizing. 2. Look carefully at your Career Narrative Essay working draft to determine where your summary belongs. Within the paragraph, place the summary where it most logically fits. Underline the summary. Note: Try to put your summary in a paragraph that needs evidence or an example. 3. Follow your summary with a parenthetical citation. 4. Immediately follow the parenthetical citation with a sentence or two explaining the summary’s importance with analysis. Why does the summary matter, how does it relate to the paragraph, and/or what should the reader think about it? Step 3: Find and quote a scholarly source in Walden’s Library Databases. (click to expand/reduce) Although Google Scholar is better than just a generic search, library databases are superior for research because they contain mostly peer-reviewed sources. The resources found in research databases are predominantly scholarly and are generally not available for public view on the internet, which makes these sources more credible than general sources. Databases contain published sources that originally appeared in print (journal articles, books, etc.). Follow the numbered steps below in order: 1. Click the link and follow the instructions to find sources within Walden’s Library databases that you might use in your Career Narrative Essay working draft. Click here for Foundations - Library Resources: Searching & Retrieving Materials in the Databases Browse through the results to find a source you want to quote. 2. Look carefully at your Career Narrative Essay working draft. Find the paragraph where your quote fits best. Within the paragraph, place the quote were it most logically fits. 3. Introduce the quote. Some common introductory phrases include “according to . . .the author states . . . she writes . . .” and so on. Never have a quote stand as a sentence by itself! Instead, include a sentence or phrase that prepares the reader for the quote. 4. Include a narrative or parenthetical citation to identify the specific source you quoted. 5. Immediately follow the quote with an explanation of the message or main idea you want your reader to understand. Remember, we all interpret quotes differently, so think about why this quote is important, how you want our reader to interpret it, and how it supports the ideas you are making within the paragraph. Step 4: Format your essay according to APA guidelines. (click to expand/reduce) To properly format your Career Narrative Essay, you will need to follow APA guidelines. Follow the steps below: 1. Watch the Course Paper Template video: Click the link to watch the Course Paper Template video. 2. Open the Undergraduate Paper With Advice (APA 7) template: Click the link to open the Undergraduate Paper With Advice (APA 7) template. 3. Go into the template and read it carefully. Take your time. It will tell you every step you need to follow. Paste your introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion from the draft you have just revised into each appropriate section within the template. Step 5: Create three APA reference citations. (click to expand/reduce) Now that you have found, analyzed, and incorporated evidence into your working draft, it is time to give proper credit to your sources. It is important that you understand all information from sources must be cited. This is called Academic Integrity, which is making sure that sources get credit for their ideas. Click the link for further information about Academic Integrity. Create reference citations to acknowledge each source used in your paper. Follow the numbered steps below in order: 1. The first thing to figure out is what type of source you are citing. Does the information come from a newspaper article? Does it come from a Walden Library database? Did you find it online using a search engine, like Google? Is your source a webpage, TED Talk, journal article, book, magazine, newspaper, etc.? 2. For examples of how to cite different types of sources: Click the link for examples of how to cite different types of sources. 3. Create a reference citation for each of the three sources you quoted, summarized, and paraphrased from in your paper. Paste your three reference citations into the template. Erase all of the other sample citations so that only your sources appear on the References page.