Seminar Paper:

 Literature Review & APA

Heads Up! The first draft of your Literature Review is due by midnight, Sunday, 20.4.2025! 

Please send me your text as a WORD email attachment to drjamesbacker@yahoo.com

The submission of this text has the weight of three normal in-class assignments.

Seminar Paper Work

Please take the opportunity now to make some more progress with your seminar paper. You should now have:

• a topic 

• a research question 

• the beginning of a first draft of your Literature Review to be submitted to me by April 30

• a method and have chosen the type of "research instrument" that you want to use with a set of participants: probably a questionnaire or interview (that I have approved before you start using it). 

Your Literature Review

In parallel, to prepare your Literature Review, you should continue searching for, and reading, taking notes as you go. You will need to cite or quote at least 10 of these sources in your text, according to A.P.A. formatting rules. This will occur mostly in your Literature Review and also in the Discussion section. (Referring back to the literature in your Discussion section will help you get full grades, according to the rubrics!)

When you quote, you are obviously using someone else's words. This requires quotation marks around those words, unless the quote is 40 words or more. Introduce the quote with a verb in the past tense because even if the author is still alive, the article was written in the past. Here's are examples: 

• Smith (2019) opined that "creating motivation for language learners was critically important" (p. 72).

• According to one expert, "creating motivation for language learners was critically important" (Smith, 2019, p. 72). 

Please note that the parentheses are part of the sentence that presents the quote. First, there are final quotation marks; then there is the parenthetical information; and finally, there is the final punctuation mark of the sentence.  

If your quote is 40 words or longer, you need a "blockquote," which presents the longer quote all indented, but with no quotation marks. The indentation indicates the act of quoting. You will introduce a blockquote, from the regular paragraph, something like this: 

Backer (1999) wrote: 

Foreign language (FL) instruction is distinguished from second language (SL) instruction primarily by its physical situation and the implications stemming from that physical situation. Students of a second language usually live in an area where that language is used for general needs by a large segment of the population. This means that the students can immediately practice their newly obtained linguistic knowledge in authentic situations, outside of the classroom. Often this real-life language practice can focus on the interests of the students, rather than those of the classroom teacher, and can last as long as the students choose. Current theory maintains that this type of natural, student-centered use of language is more effective in reinforcing language acquisition than traditional teacher-centered frontal lessons focusing on rules and forms. (pp. 1-2) 

Unlike in regular quotations, the final punctuation mark of the blockquote precedes the parenthetical information. Thus, the parentheses are not part of the sentence.

For both types of quotes, use "p. " for a single page and "pp. " for more than one page. Make sure you have a space and then the page number(s).  Here are examples: (p. 53) and (pp. 60-63).

Limit Your Use of Quotes!

In general, using a large number of quotes in your Literature Review indicates intellectual laziness. This is particularly true for block quotes. You should quote an author only if you cannot express the same thoughts equally or better. 

Instead, most of your Literature Review (and hopefully parts of your Discussion) will be paraphrasing the words and ideas of the authors of your source material. Paraphrasing summarizes those ideas in your own words, demonstrating that you have understood the original idea and have integrated them into your retelling of what the various authors had previously done and written. Here are examples: 

• Jones (2015) suggested that the ease of using mp3 files was more important than the slight loss in audio quality. 

• Some suggested that the ease of using mp3 files was more important than the slight loss in audio quality (Jones, 2015).

Once again, note that the parenthetical information at the end of the sentence comes before the final punctuation mark. In addition, the parenthetical information for paraphrasing does not require page numbers, but you may include page numbers if you wish. 

Think of your Literature Review as the integrated and thematic story of what researchers and other authors have done, written, or said about your topic, particularly in relation to your research question. (You should not confuse this with an "annotated bibliography," which examines the separate sources, one after another.) Start your story with a brief view of the general topic. Then become increasingly focused on sub-topics and sub-sub-topics, until you get to your specific topic. Each paragraph should have at least one citation. If you are lucky, there will be literature about your specific topic (hopefully in academic sources or at least in trade journals). If your topic is so new that there is no source material directly about it, then try to find the closest thing possible in the literature. (Remember: Write your story in the past tense. Your source authors wrote and published their work in the past.)  

Dividing your Literature Review into logical sections, sub-sections, and sub-sub-sections will help you and your readers understand the flow of the content material. Please use the proper APA-7 formats for each of the headings at the beginning of each level:

• Level One headings (section headings) are centered, bold, and "title case" (i.e., capitalizing the first word and all important words). 

• Level Two heading (sub-section headings) are flush-left, bold, and title case.

• Level Three headings (sub-sub-section headings) are flush-left, bold italic, and title case.

• There are other levels in APA-7, but you will probably not need them.   

While you are looking for source material and taking notes, make sure that you have noted all the information you will need to list the source in your A.P.A. style Reference List. It would be a shame to have to find a source again in order to list it correctly!

While we are mentioning the Reference List, please note that one of the biggest mistakes students make is not creating hanging indents for the items in the Reference List. Here's a video tutorial that will teach you how. Probably the second most common error is getting the capitalization for titles of books and articles wrong:

• Capitalize the first word of the title

• Capitalize the first word of the sub-title

• Capitalize every word that naturally gets capitalized

Note that the names of the journals are spelled exactly as they appear on the journal. 

Possibly the third most common mistakes in a Reference List happen with incorrect italicization. Probably every entry in your Reference List will have at least one element italicized:

• Italicize the title of books and free-standing articles (i.e., not in journals).

• Italicize the name of journals. 

An Important Self-Check!

Have you re-read the document entitled "Doing a Seminar Paper with Dr. Backer"? Even if you have skimmed it, it's now time to concentrate on the section dealing with the literature review.

Remember, a literature review is a theme-driven narrative, weaving together what other authors wrote in the PAST, so the grammar of the literature review should be all in the PAST (or past perfect aspect). It should move from the most general concepts to the most specific concepts.

IMPORTANT: This is NOT an annotated bibliography, which you may have learned about in other classes. The literature review does NOT thoroughly explicate a single source in one or more paragraphs, moving on to the next source in the next paragraph(s). The literature review is THEMATIC and weaves sources together in the specific paragraph that deals with that THEME. It then moves on to the next THEME. 

If you are basing your study on the hypothesis that motivation leads to better foreign language acquisition, you must start by reviewing at least one source that presents this hypothesis. 

Important Note

Some of you will be examining the value of specific technological tool or procedure in the EFL classroom. This will probably involve asking students and/or teachers for their opinions. Thus, you will be examining the value of the technological tool or procedure indirectly, which is fine, but you should recognize this in your study (either in the Introduction, the Methods section, and/or the Discussion section). 

You may ask the students various questions that indicate the motivational aspects of the tools or procedures. Once again, you must recognize the indirect nature of your research design. Luckily, there is a massive amount of literature that suggests that motivation is indeed a key factor in successful L2 learning.  In your literature review, you must cite a number of these sources in order to design your study about student motivation in regard to the use of the specific tool or procedure in the EFL classroom. This will allow you to present (in the Discussion section) hypotheses about the efficacy (or lack of efficacy) of the tool or procedure  Please note that, given your small sample size, you will not be able to make strong assertions about the tool or procedure. If you are lucky, your data will allow you to agree (or disagree) with the sources in your Literature Review.  

Your Developing Reference List

As you actually cite (or quote) your sources, your list of transforms from bibliography (a list of potentially good sources) to an A.P.A. reference list. Remember, every source cited (or quoted) in your text must have a corresponding entry in the reference list.  (The one major exception is a "personal communication" [a phone call, conversation, or interview]. This is noted only in the text, not in the reference list.)

Find the formatting requirements at the OWL site, at: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/general_format.html .

For understanding APA formatting from a different angle, please examine this PowerPoint presentation:

Some AI tools that can help you with the seminar paper 

(Updated: 19 February 2024)

• Grammarly (free version) https://www.grammarly.com/   DEFINITELY run your text (the whole text or each major section) to find grammatical, spelling, punctuation, and stylistic problems. You will want to accept 95% of all the suggestions Grammarly makes to improve your writing.  

• Perplexity (free version) https://www.perplexity.ai/ 

Put your research question into this AI-based search engine and get a short response that probably contains some good sources. Make sure to check the sources to make sure the AI isn’t “hallucinating.” The text of the response may give you some ideas about how to structure your literature review.

• gotFeedback Lite (free version) https://feedback.gotlearning.com/

You can run text up to 1,500 words and get an AI-generated critique of your academic writing. The major sections of your seminar paper will probably have more than 1,500 words, so check sub-sections. This will produce both specific and general suggestions about improving the content and style of your work. You probably won’t accept everything that the tool suggests, but at least think about the suggestions.

• ChatGPT (free version) https://chat.openai.com/ Ask this AI chatbot to format your sources according to A.P.A. standards and it will probably give you near-perfect results. Nevertheless, check the results manually with the OWL website. ChatGPT sometimes makes mistakes. 

There is no specific homework this week. 

Work on your seminar papers!