Getting Johnsonian

[robinturner]

I've just been grading research proposals for term papers. These aren't serious PhD-type research proposals, just an abstract, an outline, a list of quotations they think they might use, and a list of sources (i.e. a putative Works Cited page). So far I have written the following on two of them (and expect to add it to others): "You have some interesting quotations and some good sources, but your quotations don't come from your sources, and your sources have no quotations."

Comments

[grrrlishgrin.livejournal.com]

Wait, how?

[solri.livejournal.com]

That was my initial response! What I asked them to do was write down quotations they think they might use, with parenthetical or footnote citation, and then give full citations at the end— just like you would if you were writing an actual paper, in fact. However, in some of the proposals, the quotations seem to come from somewhere else (probably a site like famousquotes.com). It looks like they found a bunch of academic-looking sources but couldn't be bothered to read them, and so got their quotations by searching Google.