After successfully completing this week's Learning Module, you should:

• Understand the major essay sections and the moves that meet readers' rhetorical needs

• Select one or more elements of information literacy to focus on in your essay

• Be able to form your own purpose statement to introduce essay elements and match them to body paragraph topic sentences

• Begin working to introduce more than one source with correct attribution in each body paragraph and synthesize sources effectively to develop corroboration

• Further your understanding of source types, how to find credible sources, and how to integrate sources into your essay with your own words

This week you'll continue working on the third essay assignment. That essay focuses on creating a guide to teach college students about information literacy. The challenge, as you might have noticed, is that we've switched from a persuasive purpose (using a thesis, proving your own position) to an informative purpose (using a purpose statement, explaining only what experts say about the topic). It also introduces two additional challenges: finding sources and citing them in MLA format. 

With that in mind, we'll work in this week's module to make sure you're set with something to write about. We'll also work to form a complete purpose statement, check that you've mapped that onto an outline, and review some additional information about finding/integrating sources for this kind of writing. Next week you'll keep working to develop a full rough draft and spend some time reviewing one last time how to find more research and correctly cite your sources. 

If you're feeling stuck or behind, start by reviewing last week's module, email or text if your professor can clarify anything, or consider scheduling office hours for time to work one-on-one with your professor. For this essay it's really important to get a strong start and have a solid foundation to build upon as soon as you can since it can be challenging work.  

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You can see a video walkthrough of this week's assignments and where to submit them here.

Review: Creating an Outline for Informative Essays

Last week we had an early look at an outline for this kind of writing. What might not have been clear is that the outline comes not from what your professor is looking for, but what we know readers will need from you at certain points in the essay. Some of this, you'll notice, has overlap with our second essay which had a persuasive purpose. That's tricky because we have to pay close attention to where there are differences unique to informative purpose. 

Before we explain those things that change, let's take another look at the outline--one you could use any time you've been asked to write an informative essay:

INTRODUCTION

Give a definition of information literacy

Explain the exigence (a problem or current event) causing you to write

Present a purpose statement telling readers what elements of information literacy you'll cover

BODY (2-3 paragraphs depending on the number of sources used)

Cover one element of information literacy per paragraph, and establish the element in a topic sentence

Look to find more than one source speaking on each element

Use signal phrases, quotation, and MLA in-text citations

Explain what the quote means, give examples, and connect to other ideas, but stay neutral and avoid your own opinion

Offer a concluding sentence to establish the main point you wanted to cover

CONCLUSION

Restate the purpose statement from your introduction but switch to past tense

Give a summary of key points from each paragraph 

Explain benefits if readers learn from your essay

So first, the similarities with persuasive writing: there's still exigence to get readers engaged, there are still topic and concluding sentences to organize body paragraphs, sources still require signal phrases (though this time the more formal audience requires in-text citations as well), and the conclusion still needs to show benefits to help readers see the significance of your essay in their own lives. 

But the differences are also important. This time you're including a definition because a reader unfamiliar with your topic of information literacy will need a little more of an introduction to keep up, there needs to be a purpose statement that sets up what areas the essay will cover (not a thesis that sets up the argument you'll make), and the conclusion repeats that purpose statement as a way of echoing the introduction and thereby signaling a conclusion (because we can't say "In conclusion" given that it's not done in published writing), but it also needs to summarize key points since the goal is to educate readers who may have missed something.  

As you make sense of these similarities and differences, you can often just focus on following your professor's guidance. But the key is to also understand how these changes are about managing a different purpose (informative, not persuasive) and a different audience (formal, not informal). When you catch that detail and learn what changes are necessary you'll have a stronger ability to move between different rhetorical writing situations without someone guiding you. 

Breaking a Topic Into More than One Element

If you've started working on the essay using the outline in last week's module, or even if you've taken a second to look at the student sample from a previous semester, you might have noticed that each body paragraph has a single specific focus. That's an important goal for any paragraph, but it presents a unique challenge: how to break one topic into more than one element. 

For many complex topics this can be tricky since we need to know enough about the subject to identify the different parts; however, for information literacy the primary definition from the ALA Presidential Committee on Information Literacy (1989) gives us the elements:

"To be information literate, a person must be able to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information."

That means you only have four different options for what to include in your body paragraphs: 

1. Recognize when information is needed

2. Have the ability to locate a source

3. Know how to evaluate sources

4. Be able to integrate/cite the information

For this essay, there are some elements that are easier than others (#1 is hardest, #3 is least challenging), and there are some more natural pairs (#2+#3 makes sense, #1+#2 works, but #4 is usually off on its own). 

The bottom line here is that you'll need to pick one, ideally two, things to teach readers about in the body of your essay. It's your choice, and no matter what you pick there will be sources available since information literacy is taught at almost every college or university across the country. If you get stuck making a decision or have questions if you're on the right track, make sure you reach out to your professor by email/text. 

Forming a Purpose Statement for Informative Essays

There's a chance you've never written an informative essay, or used a purpose statement, since most of the time they appear in specific majors, like STEM fields that use lab reports, or humanities and social science fields that include in-depth literature reviews of published research on a specific subject. Because of that, one of the challenges for this assignment is breaking the habits of other papers you've written (especially the thesis statement). 

One way to keep them straight is to think about your goal in writing. Unlike in persuasive essays that use a thesis, in an informative essay you're not trying to convince us of anything, and you're not presenting your own ideas. Instead, you're educating readers using existing research. That means you should use a purpose statement that sets specific goals for what you're going to cover in the writing. 

The basic formula for this, which you can copy and alter to match your own style and subject, looks like this:

The purpose of this essay is to explain __________ and __________. 

You can see different wording in the student sample, but the basic approach is the same. In the formula above, the blanks are where you'd indicate the one or two elements of information literacy you plan to cover in the body paragraphs (see the four options just above this section). If you're paying really close attention you might have noticed that the model is still narrow/specific and still identifies a map for the essay that follows. Those are the same goals you have when you write a thesis for a persuasive essay, so hopefully it isn't too unfamiliar. 

What Is Source Synthesis?

One additional element of this assignment that can be challenging is source synthesis. This is a marker of advanced writing no matter the purpose (informative or persuasive) but it goes against our instinct to include one source and move on. Instead, it asks us get more than one source to overlap or show difference. 

This more complicated explanation from the Purdue OWL might be helpful, but the basics are that you'll need more than one source per body paragraph. And if you've done good work establishing a single focus for each body paragraph, specifically tying it to your purpose statement, you should have the rest under control. 

But the mechanics of this can be tricky. After you give a topic sentence setting up the one element of information literacy you're going to focus on in the paragraph, you'll need to use the next sentence to introduce the first source. For synthesis, a second source will focus on saying something similar to the first source (overlap) or different than the first source (divergence). It can help to remember is that both moves will help show readers something interesting about the element of information literacy you're focused on in that paragraph. 

Okay, so what does this actually look like? Here's a sample paragraph that shows synthesis with more than one source:

One way to determine if a source is needed is to check if the words or ideas in an essay have been borrowed. According to the University of Washington Libraries, borrowed content can include “words (quotations, phrases, sayings, etc.),” “thoughts or ideas (summarizations and paraphrases),” or “audio or visual material (photos, videos, screencaptures, powerpoint slides, social media content, audio recordings, etc.)” (“Citing Sources: When Should I Use a Citation?”). Most of the time this is words directly copied from a source, but sources are also needed for an author’s ideas if we paraphrase. The Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning gives specific examples of when to cite a source, including “When you quote two or more words verbatim,” “When you introduce facts that you have found in a source,” “When you paraphrase or summarize ideas,” and “When you introduce information that is not common knowledge” (“Warning: When You Must Cite”). The key in each of these examples is to always give credit when something is borrowed, and it generally helps to be more included to cite a source than to skip the citation and risk plagiarism. The key to determining if a source is needed is to check if the words or ideas in an essay have been borrowed and to make sure appropriate credit is given to the source. 

Notice here how there's a topic sentence and then two different sources presented. Notice how transition words and phrases do a lot of work to indicate overlap. And then notice how the last sentence, the concluding sentence, helps to emphasize the topic sentence. 

This all means that at the most basic level you should focus on finding more than one source for each element of information literacy you focus on, developing good transitions (not to mention signal phrases/citations), and generally showing us where experts overlap and disagree. All of that, if it's not clear, should be clearer in the student sample. 

Source Types and Where to Find Them

We'll spend a lot more time talking about research next week, but I wanted to clarify a few quick things that might be on your mind when it comes to sources. 

Remember, the only absolute requirement for this essay is that you use multiple sources with perceived credibility

What Is Perceived Credibility?

This really refers to 1) how recognizable a source would be to readers, and 2) how much they would be likely to trust the source. For example, if I have two Google search results, with one from Wikipedia and one from a college or university, it's more important to think about what your readers will trust than what your professor allows. It just so happens in this example that college/university websites (which are the majority of sources for this essay about information literacy) have good perceived credibility. So your goal here is to focus on websites that have a .edu domain. You can even add "site:.edu" to the end of your search terms to automatically limit the results. That's a shortcut, but it helps. 

What Kinds of Sources Can I Use?

Most college courses like this divide the world into two kinds of sources. The first are credible websites, like we mention above, and the other are scholarly sources which we get from databases based in the RCC Library or something like Google Scholar. But this essay doesn't have a lot of those sources available (though there is this textbook about information literacy from SUNY that could help as you write), which means the majority of our sources come from colleges and universities. 

Give this a shot as you do research to find sources about each of the elements of information literacy you identified earlier in the module and when forming your purpose statement. That should help you end up with more than enough information to share with your readers. 

How Many Sources Do I Need?

Lots. The more the better. But at a minimum, you should plan on at least two per body paragraph and a minimum of one for your definition in the introduction. It's important to not think of this as your professor's demand; it's just what readers for this kind of writing will need to see a full exploration of the subject. 

Review: Integrating Research into an Essay

We'll do a little more in-depth work to review how to use sources in the essay next week, including activities to practice MLA in-text citation and Works Cited page citations. For now, these are the important skills to focus on as you start bringing sources into your writing:

Signal Phrases

Signal phrases introduce anything you borrow from outside and give attribution to the source. They're not hard to do, and remembering to do them is the best way to protect yourself from plagiarism. They also help you avoid a writing error called a dropped quotation. 

The basic formula to use as a starting point is: According to ________, "..." 

But I also want you to think of signal phrases as how we communicate credibility in our writing. And since credibility is necessary for persuasion, it's worth remembering. So rather than giving a title in your signal phrase, something that only communicates credibility if the reader has heard of the source, I want you to tell readers the author's credentials. Credentials can be a simple statement of where the person works and what they do:

According to Christopher Ferguson, Kimberlee Salmond, and Kamla Modi, university researchers who study child psychology, "the influence of reality television on adolescent behavior is complex" (1175). 

Even though this is a bit vague in terms of their credentials, it's still better than giving a title since it helps readers see these people as experts in this field. Note, too, that you only need to use the full name(s) and credentials the first time you use the source; after that, you would refer to them by last names only. 

Quotation

Remember, quotation is when you borrow someone's exact words. Those words go inside quotation marks and cannot be changed without indication in[side] of square brackets. To see more rules for quotation marks, including where to put punctuation, review this handout from the Purdue OWL. 

And remember, every time you use a quotation you need a signal phrase and you'd want in-text citations. You'll need one every time, too, not once at the end of a paragraph. 

Paraphrase

Paraphrase is treated the same as quotation, but instead of using the exact words you'd reword the source's ideas into your own structure and language. This is hard and it increases the risk of unintentional plagiarism, but it's a mark of more advanced writing. 

You can find some review of the specific techniques, expectations, and examples from the Purdue OWL here. 

In-Text Citation

If you haven't written a paper in MLA format for along time (or ever) then this can be tricky. The important fact here is that each sentence with borrowed information needs a citation at the end. That citation goes in parenthesis. What's inside the parenthesis will match the first item of the Works Cited citation (more on that in a minute. If that's abstract (and it is) then consider reviewing this guide from the Purdue OWL, ask questions, and give it a shot so you can find out where you get stuck. Remember, MLA isn't going anywhere, and it's even more likely to be used the further you go towards your degree. So take the time to learn, practice, and get feedback here to help you do great in your future courses. 

Works Cited Citation

The second part of MLA citation is to include a separate page after your conclusion that provides all the details readers need to find your sources. You can see the formatting here, which is worth trying to get right even if you're not confident, and you can see some details on specific citations in this quick guide. 

We'll use MLA citation and outside sources for our final essay, so even if you're not seeing my point about learning it for your future courses, you'll want to get this right to do well on Essay #4. 

Key Takeaways

• It's helpful to understand the specific needs readers have in order to make decisions about what to include in your essay and where to include it. 

• Your essay about information literacy should break the topic into specific elements and focus on using more than one source to help your audience learn about the subject. 

• Because this is an informative essay, not a persuasive essay, you'll need to adjust our standard outline and move from a thesis statement to a purpose statement. 

• As we look for sources to present in each body paragraph we should focus on credible websites--sources that readers will have heard of and ideally trust; we should also remember to include a signal phrase, quotation/paraphrase, in-text citation, and Works Cited page.

Essay #3 Materials

Essay #3 Assignment Sheet

Essay #3 Scoring Rubric

Process Portfolio Assignment Sheet

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Essay #3 Student Sample

Essay #3 Sample with Outline

MLA Quick Guide from Appalachian State University

"MLA Overview and Workshop" from the Purdue OWL

"MLA Formatting and Style Guide" from the Purdue OWL