Quotation Activity

Mrinalini Manektala

Writing and Reading

Hem Paudel

25 February 2016

Quotation Activity

            I have written several papers in the past and included many quotes, but after reading the sections from the book I am now realizing I may have not done the best job. For example, in the first major assignment for this class, I included a quote saying: “If not written in a five paragraph format, it is still more organized than non-academic writing usually separated into different paragraphs about a topic or multiple topics. This can be seen in one of the journal articles I researched. “The second observation that questioned the primacy of the SK/ROMK channel as the K secretory channel in the CCD...”(Carissoza-Gaytan, Carattino, Kleyman, Stalin, 2013). I used this example because the paragraph starts with “The second observation” showing that the article is separated into different paragraphs about a topic which is what the organization is like in academic writing.” I think I did a decent job on the introduction and including the quote, but I do not think I did the best job explaining it after I quoted it. A way I could have explained it better after the quote would be by saying something like “I included this quote because the way that it states “the second observation” means that there had to have been a thesis included on all the observations on this topic, and it is organized into different paragraphs which is shows how properly academic writing is structured”.

            I have also done a lot of writing in the past for high school. Another example of where I could have explained my quotations better is from an English paper I wrote last semester. The paper was about a poem and therefore included quotations from the poem itself. “It is easy to tell that the tone of the poem is dark and that it was written in the 1800s by some of the words he uses. For example, in lines seven and eight the author says “Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor”. No one speaks like this in modern day because there are much simpler ways these lines could be worded.” I included all parts that I needed to, but I think I could have gone more in depth. For example in the introduction I could have said “You can easily make out that the tone of the poem is dark, dreary, and mysterious because of the jargon the author uses since this poem was written in the 1800s”. And for the explanation afterwards I could have said something like “This quote obviously included language we do not use in modern day and therefore it is easy to tell that the poem was written a long time ago. You can also make out the tone of the poem from these lines because it includes words like “dying ember” and “ghost” which add to the dark, dreary tone of the poem”. These are ways I could have included quotations better in my past papers.