Jeez, I can't resist the subject line. Been thinking about this, and getting more confused, for a quarter of a century. So. I think Rick's absolutely right that it's nothing more or less than a rhetorical problem. But I'm not so sure about this: > The preceding, of course, becomes particularly important once > students learn that more than direct quotations requires > referencing. . . . because I'm not so sure it's (what all of us were taught to think of it as) primarily a _moral_ problem. Morality is what I hear in "requires." I know, I know, there's all this stuff about ownership and credit . . . but by and large, that's not what's at stake when I decide to cite, or quote, Rick's article on "literacy crises." The rhetorical move there is more like, "Look, this isn't just my looney idea -- Rick Coe, a published writer, says this too." Another problem starts with this (with which I totally agree): > Of course, > students often don't have much sense of the discourse community they > are nominally addressing in academic papers, so they will have > difficulty deciding what needs to be referenced. This is, of course, because there _is no_ discourse community they're addressing in those papers. My difficulty, then is with this next sentence: > But we can, at > least, make sure they understand the rhetorical nature of the problem > so that, as they read and research, they can try to get a sense of > what the particular discourse community considers common knowledge. If it were so straightforward I wouldn't have all these problems. But it isn't enough to "make sure they understand" to _tell them_, especially if there isn't a real discourse community, but only a writing teacher trying to synthesize one; and in fact the only way I can think of to make sure they understand is to _put_ them into a discourse community. But this is a problem I've been wrestling with for a decade now. -- Russ __|~_ Russell A. Hunt __|~_)_ __)_|~_ Learning and Teaching Department of English )_ __)_|_)__ __) Development Office St. Thomas University | )____) | EMAIL:[log in to unmask] Fredericton, New Brunswick___|____|____|____/ FAX: (506) 450-9615 E3B 5G3 CANADA \ / PHONE: (506) 452-0644 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~