 I did lots of referencing, but my teacher says the sources are no good. I don't understand how can the source be no good. Let's have a look at your writing. What's the first source? Well, the topic is textbook prices, and the first source says they are reasonable. What's the author? I don't know. I found it on the internet. Okay, let's do a search. Oh, look, he works for a publishing company. Ah, okay, moving quickly on. What about this next one? Let me see. Oh, it was written last century. So what? It was from the same time as the information is talking about. The information might have been accurate then, but it might be out of date now. Might be, but might not be. Look, you are saying how many taxable publishers there are in Hong Kong, but your topic is about the situation now, so you need an up-to-date number. Okay, I'll look for one later. What next? There's this quote. Yes, it's great. The speaker said exactly the point I wanted to make. What event was he speaking at? It was a conference. Who sponsored the conference? The speaker's publishing company. See the problem? Yeah. Next. I found this quote in a book. It's a quote from another book. Did the latter author agree with the earlier one? Does it matter? Well, if the latter author proved the earlier one wrong, yes it does. How can I tell? Read the whole chapter. That will take ages. Better slow than wrong. And you can scheme through it. You don't need to read every word. What about this quote? It's from a parent, saying that textbooks are too expensive, and so there is an unfair advantage for rich students. Of course, parents want cheaper textbooks. They are not unbiased sources. Anyone who can make or save money on an issue is unbiased source. Everyone's biased, except me. It's natural. Everyone's got a background and everyone looks at problems from their own point of view. If you can't quote biased people, you can't quote at all. You are not writing a newspaper article, giving quotes about what people say. You are doing academic writing, which should use the least biased sources to find the best answer. So what's wrong with this last one? It's from someone who says knowledge should be free so that everyone can benefit from it. If knowledge is free, who's going to pay to create it, check it, and publish it? He's assuming that people will do this for free, but people need to eat. And to get good quality information, you need to pay the best people. Knowledge is free is an unrealistic assumption. Quality costs money. There's an English saying, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Thank you for your advice. Would you like a peanut?