LANG1402 Chap.3 Reporting and Referencing What You Read
Reporting and Referencing What You Read
The verb is a claim about the source
When you write about what somebody else has said, the verb you choose is not neutral packaging. It tells a reader what that writer was doing and how you are reading them.
The lesson groups the common verbs by the action they describe: stating or presenting information, making a claim or argument, suggesting or proposing, showing or demonstrating through research, and acknowledging or conceding. Learning the groups rather than the list is what lets you choose quickly.
The one verb to avoid is says, because every source says something and the useful question is whether it reports, argues, concedes or demonstrates.
Precision cuts both ways: writing that an author demonstrates a point the source only suggests hands your reader a claim your own reference list can refute.
Five patterns that do the attributing
A verb needs a sentence built around it, and the lesson supplies five patterns that cover almost everything a literature review requires. Author plus verb plus a that-clause is the workhorse.
According to plus the source suits an organisation better than an individual. The article or study plus verb plus a noun phrase compresses a finding. As the author verbs signals that you are aligning with a source rather than merely citing it. And a passive construction foregrounds the reported idea, which is worth using sparingly because it hides the agent.
All five share one property: the reader knows where the idea came from before the sentence ends.
Reported speech, and the exception that matters
Relaying what a source wrote usually involves three changes: the tense steps back, pronouns shift to the third person, and words anchored to the original moment are rewritten. The exception is the one students get wrong.
A definition, a standing statistic or a continuing trend keeps the present tense, because the step back applies to what was said rather than to what is still true. Backshifting a live fact quietly tells your reader that it has since changed. The lesson then turns to source types and to where reliable information actually lives, landing on a formulation worth memorising: an answer from a search engine or an assistant is a lead.
Check the fact itself, track the publication it came from down through the library, and cite that.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Five functional groups of reporting verb
- 02
Why says carries no information, and why demonstrates can carry too much
- 03
The five attribution patterns, and when each one fits
- 04
Tense, pronouns and time words in reported speech
- 05
The facts that keep the present tense, and why it matters
- 06
Four source types matched to the question each answers best
- 07
Search engines, assistants and the library in the right order
- 08
Signalling phrase plus reporting verb plus reported idea
Build one attributed paragraph from two sources
- 2Summarise each text in your own words with a suitable verb.
- 2Vary the verbs so that the relationship to each source is visible.
- 2Close with your own sentence saying what the two jointly establish.
Key terms
- Reporting Verb
- The verb that carries a source's idea into your sentence and states what the source was doing with it, such as reports, argues, concedes or demonstrates.
- Signalling Phrase
- The part of a sentence that names where an idea came from, whether an author and year, an organisation or the document itself.
- Reported Speech
- The grammar used to relay what somebody wrote, normally shifting tense back, moving pronouns to the third person and rewriting words tied to the original moment.
- Reference Work
- A source such as an encyclopedia or dictionary, best used for a reliable overview or definition at the start of a search rather than as evidence in a review.
- Organisational Report
- A publication from a recognised body, useful for authoritative statistics and stated policy positions that a journal article may not carry.
- Library Guide
- A curated route into the databases and search tools for a subject, which is where a lead found elsewhere is turned into a citable source.
- Attribution
- The practice of showing which idea belongs to which source, so that a reader can always tell where a source stops and your own reasoning begins.
Reporting and Referencing What You Read FAQ
Why is says discouraged in academic writing?
Because it tells a reader nothing. Every source says something, so the word carries no information about whether the author was presenting a fact, defending a contested position, conceding ground or reporting a result. Swapping in a precise verb can change a paragraph from a list into an argument, because three sources that argue are in dispute while three that report merely agree about facts.
When should a reported idea keep the present tense?
Whenever it is still true. Definitions, standing statistics and continuing trends stay in the present, because the step back in tense applies to the act of saying rather than to the state of the world. Pushing a live fact into the past implies to your reader that it has since changed, which is a claim you have not made and cannot support.
Can I cite an answer from a search engine or an assistant?
No. The lesson's formulation is that such an answer is a lead rather than a reference: useful for finding keywords or for a rough picture of a field, and never citable in itself. Check the fact, then track down the publication behind it through the library, and let that publication be what enters your report, because a plausible-looking citation you have not opened may not exist.
Assessment move
Take one source you already intend to use and write the same finding five times, once with each attribution pattern. It takes ten minutes and it removes the commonest monotony in a literature review, which is three paragraphs that all begin with an author's surname.
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