Student Researchers' Citation Behavior

Research in recent years has demonstrated that construction of knowledge is a social process. Explicit reference to previous research, or citation, is one feature of this interactivity. Citation is used to credit sources, to demonstrate writers' familiarity with the field, to support writers' arguments, or to 'create a research space' [Swales, J., (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press]. Important as it is, citation is often found difficult by student researchers. The current study investigated first-year graduate students' citation behavior. Eighteen student papers were collected for analysis. Aspects examined include number of citations, surface forms of citations, presentation of cited work, and citations in rhetorical sections. The analysis shows that students used far fewer citations than expert writers. Their preference for summary and generalization exhibited a similarity to more experienced researchers'. However, students were found to rely on long quotes when presenting cited information, a citation strategy less commonly adopted in the humanities and social sciences. Implications of the findings are discussed at the end. 近年來的研究顯示知識建構是一種社會化的過程；而直接引述之前的研究或引文是此互動行為的一個特徵。根據1990年Swales, J.的著作「文體分析：學術以及研究領域中的英文」，引文是用來證明出處、顯示作者對於該領域的認識、支持作者的論述、或是發展新的研究領域。引文行為重要，但是學生族群的研究者通常會覺得困難。此研究探討了一年級研究生們的引文行為；蒐集來自18份學生們的報告做為分析的資料。分析的方向包括引文的數量、引文的形式、受引用作品的形式，以及在修辭部分的引文。分析結果顯示出學生要比專業作家使用更少的引文。他們對大綱摘要以及統整的喜好與較資深的研究者較為相同。然而，研究發現學生們在表達引文時，常引用較長的內容，這是在天文以及社會學科的研究中較少運用到的。文章最後討論了根據發現結果所提出的建議。