Writing from Multiple Sources and Digital Competences in the English Language I Course

FL Copias

Lugar: Cordoba; Año: 2026 p. 49

978-987-8382-27-2

Academic writing is a complex skill that all writers have to learn and practise. Inparticular, writing from multiple sources that you have read, or background readingtexts, is not a simple task and requires both instruction and practice for some importantreasons.The first reason why writing from sources may be difficult is that, nowadays, studentsoften use texts they have read in a way that may be considered not conventional. Digitalnatives can easily exploit the Internet to do homework assignments. However,technology sometimes leads to ineffective use of sources (background reading materials)or plagiarism as it enables you to copy. Some students consider it appropriate not toacknowledge these sources (e.g. include the author and year of publication). Theymisunderstand the idea of originality and believe it is related to combining texts. Today,students value solidarity and cooperation. That is why intellectual property andattribution (acknowledging sources with author and year of publication) may not be partof their usual practices. Thus, the advent of the Internet has led to a change in the waystudents read and write texts.Another reason writing from sources requires instruction and practice is that, manytimes, when teaching to write from sources, teachers only focus on the conventionsand provide practice in decontextualized sentence-level skills to quote, paraphrase,summarize and synthesize single sentences (or short texts) and warn students againstplagiarism. While this approach may be useful, it is necessary to learn not only themechanical conventions to write from sources but also their functions and meaning inthe new text.Moreover, plagiarism has traditionally been understood as unethical behavior, but thisdoes not help students use sources effectively. Students should learn to identify what canbe considered plagiarism, understand its origins and recognize the diversity of standardsin different disciplines. To do so, we have adopted a multidimensional approach toteaching and learning writing from sources that has five dimensions.