Hello, my name's Tom and welcome back to
my channel where I talk a little bit
about theatre, a little bit about being
a PhD student and a little bit about
those two things tied up in a bow
together. Today, my first video that I'm
recording in 2018 and it's gonna be
another episode of Essay Tips. If you're
new here, then please do consider
subscribing and, as always, if there's any
particular elements of study
skills or essay writing that you'd like
me to make a video on then please do
drop a comment down below. But, today, we
are going to be looking at expanding our
bibliographies and finding more
references for our essays.
So, one of my more popular videos is one
in which I looked at some tips and
tricks for using Google Scholar to find
references in terms of journal articles
and books that might be useful in
writing essays. However, as I've begun to
do a little bit more teaching of
undergraduates over the last couple of
terms, I've realized that some of those
skills can actually be quite advanced.
And so, I wanted to do a slightly more
entry-level video about finding
references and how we might use them
within our academic writing particularly
at undergraduate level and particularly
that first year of undergrad. I think
this new need to reference everything
that we're writing about can be a real
challenge
in that step up from school to
university or college and so I wanted to
do a little bit of a video in which I
talked about why we do this as well as
some strategies to make those reference
lists, those bibliographies at the end of
our essays, feel a little bit more
substantial. While some people cope with
this step up really, really well I always
find that some people struggle to
find the reasoning behind it and, as such,
either hand in essays with very few
references at all or try and stack full
a bibliography of books which
maybe haven't been consulted as much as
they suggest they have. So, today I wanted to
do a slightly more entry-level video in
which I look at how we use referencing
in writing our essays and, also,
underlying all of that, a little bit of
why. One question I get asked an awful
lot is how many references should be
included for essays of varying lengths.
And, unfortunately, as with many things in
the world of academia and university,
there's no simple answer to this.
Sometimes, particularly within early
undergraduate essays, there's a
stipulated number of references that are
stated on an assessment brief that it
says that you should draw from or
include in your bibliography. And I think
this is useful in underlining how
important referencing is at undergraduate
level. However, I think, sometimes, it can
make it seem a little bit like a box
ticking exercise rather than something
that has real academic value to it.
The first take-home piece of advice from
this video, then, is to always assume that,
if there is that stipulated number of
references to include in an assessment
or assignment
brief, then to always take that as very,
very light guidance. Essentially, in most
cases, I'd say that should be the
absolute bare minimum number of
references that you're including in your
essay. I'd really suggest that, in most
cases, you want to be including an even
longer bibliography from that which is
suggested to show whoever's marking
that essay that you've really gone above
and beyond in seeking out sources and
resources that you might draw upon to
inform the writing of that essay and
that you've got a real mastery of the
subject that you're writing about. The
function of referencing is essentially
to back up any claims that we're making
within an essay that we might be writing.
So, for example, I might want to start an
essay about Star Wars by stating that
Star Wars is an incredibly popular film
franchise. Now, if I was talking to some
of my friends, then I might be able to
say this and it might go uncontested. But
lots of people don't particularly like
Star Wars that much and, if I was to hand
in an essay to someone who didn't like
Star Wars that much and say it was
incredibly popular, then they might
rightly be able to use themselves as an
example of how it is not universally
popular. So, instead, what I want to do is use
some evidence to back up exactly how I'm
measuring popularity but also to be able
to point to some study or some stats
which show that it is in that way
popular. So, for example, I might draw upon
this Forbes article (that I did a quick
Google and found) which says that Star
Wars is the third most financially
successful film franchise of all the
time and include reference to that
within my essay. Therefore, rather than
stating that Star Wars is in some way
popular, I'm specifically stating that
Star Wars has been financially
successful and I'm giving some evidence
to back up that claim. Where previously,
then, I was just stating that Star
Wars was broadly popular in some
undefined sense of popularity and
therefore leaving myself open to someone
contesting that or disagreeing with me,
in fact now what I'm doing is very
specifically stating how I'm measuring
popularity but, more, importantly I'm
referencing where I've got those numbers
from so that I can prove that it has
that financial significance. This brings
me to another misconception which I
often come across and that is that there
is in some way a difference between
referencing and citing between quoting
within an article and the bibliography
which sits at the end. Now for the
purposes of this video I'd like to
suggest that, in most cases, these are two
parts of the same whole; they're
essentially one and the same; that they
should work together throughout your
essay. In my essay on Star Wars, then,
I'll both include a citation to that
Forbes article in the sentence where I
talk about the financial success of Star
Wars (either by directly quoting a
passage from that article or by just
including the reference in my
chosen style at the end of the sentence
where I mention that statistic) but I'll
also include it in my bibliography at
the end.
I'd suggest it a little bit unwise to
include too many books or articles or
essays in your bibliography at the end
of your essay which you don't directly
either quote from or draw facts from and
then cite during the main body of your
essay. I quite often find that bits of
work get handed in where there is lots
of works which have supposedly been
referred to by the person that has
written a particular essay but not
directly drawn or quoted upon from. And
now, whether this is the intention or not
or the case or not, what often happens is
this comes across as though the student's
trying to kind of bulk out their
bibliography without actually having to
do any in-depth reading of those pieces
of work. So, I always suggest trying to
use the books that are in your
bibliography and to quote from or draw
on facts from them throughout the main
body of your essay. And also to include
(the opposite way around) to make sure
you've included all of the citations and
quotes that you've made throughout your
essay in that bibliography at the end. If
you find yourself at the end of your
essay writing process and considering
yourself to have quite a short
bibliography, I'd suggest that will
probably happen is if you look back
through your essay and, if you're very
sure that you've got a strong argument
(which i think is a topic for another
video another time), if you look back
through your essay you'll find claims
that you've
made, or actually, it might help you to
find some more evidence to support that
claim. A good task, then, is to go away and
look for some sources which can back up
some of those claims that you've made
within your essay. In doing so, you'll
both improve the strength with which
those claims come across by providing
evidence and, by extension, increase and
draw out that bibliography that you've
got at the end. The opposite task can
also be very very useful if you're
certain that particular article or a
particular book belongs in the
bibliography of your essay but you've
yet to directly quote or draw a fact from
it throughout the main body of the essay.
Then, perhaps it's worth going away and
having another look through that
particular article or book and seeing
what facts or opinions or quotes you
might be able to draw from it throughout
the central argument of your essay.
Essentially, it's always worth
considering the bibliography and those
citations and quotations that you use
throughout the main body of your essay
as two parts of the same whole, always
working together to support each other
to back up the arguments that you're
making and therefore make your essay
even stronger. I thought I'd end by just
restating even further why we bother
including a bibliography and references
throughout our work and to kind of
implore you to view it as something more
than just another hurdle to jump over
while at uni. And I'm going to do so
through a slightly bad metaphor. So, if we
consider all of knowledge to be a tree (I
told you this was gonna be bad), then your
essay is a little sprout growing off of
a brand to growing off of another branch
growing off of another branch growing
off of the trunk which then leads down
into those roots. Without all of those
connections then the water and nutrients
from those roots would never be able to
get to that little sprout and, therefore,
it would wither off and die. In the same
way, your essay is a new argument. And for
us to take it seriously, and for it to
come across really strongly, we need to
see how that new argument is supported
by existing evidence or existing
arguments that we know to be true (which
in this, slightly stretched now, metaphor
are the kind of slightly stronger
branches and then essentially the trunk).
But, in the same way, our references show
where we've drawn facts and knowledge and
arguments from to show those links back
to the roots and to allow our arguments
and essays to grow big and strong.
(That was alright, actually, I think that
made sense). Thank you very much for
watching this Essay Tips video. If you
have enjoyed then please consider giving
it a thumbs up. If you have any questions,
any further questions, then please do put
them in the comments down below. I do
tend to hang around in the comment
sections of some of my videos when they
pop up and, also, if you've got any
tips that you'd like to pass on to some
other fellow travelers stumbling across
this video, then do leave those below too,
I'm sure the future watchers of this
video may thank you for that. But,
otherwise, thank you so much for watching
once more and have a great week!