 So let's say you're doing an assignment and you've gone off and done some research. You've found some amazing sources and you've gotten some really great information. How do you go about using this information in your own writing? In this video, we're going to talk about some techniques for how. Probably speaking, there are four main ways in which you can use information from a source. Firstly, you may be quoting from a source and this involves using a narrow segment of the source and using the exact words. You may also be paraphrasing part of a source and this involves putting a passage or a small excerpt of text into your own words. Paraphrase material is normally slightly shorter than the original passage, but the important thing is that it's in your own words. You may also do some summarizing and this involves putting the main ideas of a large section into your own words. Often, summaries are much shorter than the original, making them slightly different to the paraphrasing approach. And then finally, you may be simply referring to a source. You may not be using any of the ideas or words directly. You may just be referring to it to support your own point. Irrespective of which of these ways you use, you must acknowledge the original source, often by providing a reference of some description. Quoting is often done to capture the exact words of the original source. And this may be because the exact words of the source are essential. For example, when you're doing qualitative research, participant words in, for example, psychology research are really important. They might capture important opinions or things which may be lost if we weren't directly quoting. You also might want to direct quote in subjects like English when you're asked to refer to a particular section of the text. Quoting might also be important for you when stating the exact words of a theory or law. For example, the law of conservation of matter or other laws like that, which have existed for a while, may have specific wording, which can only be written so many different ways. So quoting them may be the most appropriate way to go about it. However, try to avoid quoting to explain a concept or idea as much as possible. Try to explain these in your own words. Quoting for explanations sometimes comes off as a bit of a question that comes off as a bit of a cop-out. It looks like you're trying to get away from explaining the concept on your own, so you're using the source itself. Try as much as possible to avoid this. Also try to avoid quoting just simply for convenience. Again, this comes across badly in writing, and instead it's better to use quoting for specific analytical purposes as needed. Given on the right here are some examples of quotes in action. Paraphrasing is often done to capture the meaning of something but using different words or sentence structures. This normally ends up with the text a little bit shorter than the original, but the important part is that the meaning more or less remains the same. Paraphrasing can be quite necessary in some cases to avoid any academic integrity issues or plagiarism issues, but the key thing is to use paraphrasing when you're focusing on a section or part of a text that you're required to write it in your own words, which is normally the case. Use your own words and, importantly, your own sentence structure as well. Just simply changing a few words here and there may not cut it. It may still be too similar to the original. Given here is a piece of text. Pause the video and have a go at paraphrasing this to the best of your ability. Now, I'm sure you may have come up with way better paraphrases, but here is an example of what this would look like paraphrased. Notice that both the sentence structure and the wording has changed and the length has shortened a tiny bit as well. Finally, summarizing is a technique used when you're creating a shorter version of a longer text. This is normally to give a concise overview of the main points or ideas without using some of those broader details that are irrelevant. Our summary captures the overall message of a text, but it doesn't use the words of the text much like paraphrasing. It uses its own sentence structure and wording. When summarizing, ask yourself a few key questions. What are the main ideas? What details in the passage are needed to support these ideas? What details are irrelevant for your specific purpose? And then try to use keywords or phrases to identify these as appropriate as possible. Have a go at summarizing this method section from a research paper. Now, again, you might have come up with much better summaries than what I'm going to show you here, but a typical summary would look something like this. Notice that the text is quite a bit shorter, but it's capturing all the important detail. Irrespective of how you use your research in your writing, you will need to acknowledge your sources. This normally involves doing some sort of referencing. Now, referencing could be either in text referencing or a reference list or probably a combination of both. The best thing to do is check with your teacher or instructor to see what is required. In text referencing is basically a citation thrown into the sentence to show where some of that information has been obtained from. Often there is a corresponding reference, full reference in the reference list that gives you more detail. When you are quoting an in text reference would look like this. At the end of the quote, you would have the last name of the author or multiple authors and a date of publication. When paraphrasing or summarizing a similar deal, you'd have the author's name as well as a date somewhere in sentence towards the end, the difference here being there's no actual quote. When simply referring to a study, once again you could do so. You can refer to the study by name over here, but you would have the last name of the author as well as the date. In all of these cases, there would be a corresponding reference in the reference list. This would be the full reference with details of the journal as well as where to find it. In conclusion, try to pick the tool that best suits the purpose. Be selective, pick the most ideal approach as needed for the context. Quote, if the exact words are important, use paraphrasing if you need to explain things in your own words. Summarize if you need to shorten quite a bit and explain things in your own words. And then just refer to if just using the source to back yourself up. Always remember to acknowledge your source, but the key thing is take ownership of your writing. Pick the approach that works best for you, your style of writing as well as what is required of the task. Thanks for listening.