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Teaching Diary 9: Why Do We Do X, Y, Z?
Mar. 16th, 2021 11:49 amHi friends in academia/familiar with academia. We're working on research papers, and one of the big components is proper formatting. Look, I think formatting is, in general, a scam. If a paper is readable, then that should be good. I have a hard time convincing myself to care, let alone my students. I usually tell them things like "this is an expectation at university, so I'm teaching you how to do this now."
The issue that came up in class today was this: the works cited page. I understand and can explain why an entry in a works cited page is formatted the way it is. My student questioned why the whole page is in alphabetical order. He arranged his sources to follow the order in which his information appeared in the essay. This makes a kind of sense! I ended up telling him that this is just a convention of the genre of academic writing.
But I'm curious about your thoughts on this. How do you teach it? What do you say about these conventions? I really try hard to not say "because that's the way it is" when teaching, although in this case, it might be the appropriate response.
The issue that came up in class today was this: the works cited page. I understand and can explain why an entry in a works cited page is formatted the way it is. My student questioned why the whole page is in alphabetical order. He arranged his sources to follow the order in which his information appeared in the essay. This makes a kind of sense! I ended up telling him that this is just a convention of the genre of academic writing.
But I'm curious about your thoughts on this. How do you teach it? What do you say about these conventions? I really try hard to not say "because that's the way it is" when teaching, although in this case, it might be the appropriate response.
