Varieties of sentence position
Theme: opening the sentence:
Theme position means the first word in the sentence. Whatever is placed there is what you are talking about & has some importance in the sentence. Putting authors here gives them far more significance than just putting them in brackets at the end of the sentence. E.g.

Min-Zhan Lu (1992) has examined the differences between [various] L1 composition pedagogies ...
(Severino, 1993: 183)

BUT .... avoid the temptation to begin each sentence with So-and-so (19xx) says... (See section 4: Common citation errors)

At the end of a sentence Such references are either used to:
•	give authoritative support to your assertion,
•	cite examples of authors who observed or found the phenomenon under discussion.

If an author does not feature in the first part of a sentence, it usually means there is no reason to bring them into the text. So 95% of 'end of sentence' citations are in brackets, as follows:
"In Korean, relative clauses are used before rather than after the head noun as in English (Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1983)" [Severino, 1993: 193]

Anywhere else in a sentence
This usually happens in more complex, comparative sentences, like the one below:
"On a University level, ESL curricula such as English for Academic Purposes (EAP) ... are not simply pragmatic, as Swales (1990) suggests, but imply an ... ideological stance .. " [Severino, 1993: 182]

Combinations: maintaining reference in citation
Important authors tend to require sustained reference. Students often have problems maintaining reference to an author. We offer examples of two particular problems:

• Moving to the pronoun form (he or she) too quickly. To play safe, try to avoid this.
  Example Notice the sequence here:
  Severino doesn't simply jump to using 'he' after introducing Tollefson in the previous sentence:
  James Tollefson (1989), in his book 'Alien winds' describes how the ESL curricula of the refugee programs follow the tradition of the Americanisation movement ... .
  Tollefson points out that in contrast to the post-World War I Americanisation programs ...., today's ESL texts focus instead on the ethos of the consumer society ... (p.57) [Severino, 1993: 182-3]
• Dropping reference to the author too quickly. Try to move gradually from explicit to implied reference to important authors (i.e. implying that the following ideas are also theirs).
  Example Flinders & Eisner (1994), on the educationist, John Dewey's ideas on criticism, move from explicit to implicit reference to Dewey & his ideas:
  "This common agenda (of critics and researchers) is ...rooted in a shared sense of purpose. John Dewey (1934) ... describes this purpose as an extension of the artistic way of knowing. In his words: 'The function of criticism is ... etc..' (1934: 324).
  What Dewey here defines as the functions of art and art criticism includes the educational as well as the aesthetic. Dewey also suggests that the ability to perceive freshly is not easy. It requires a special effort for several reasons. First ...." [1994: 344].

2nd-hand citation
It is very tempting to make use of 2nd-hand sources. That is, quotations from or attributions to an author that are made in a more recent book. This is particularly common with general textbooks, since they frequently cite or quote from famous figures in the social sciences.

You are advised to use the following verbs for such cases:

• cite - 2 examples
  "Chavez-Oller et al. (1985), citing Cziko (1983), suggest that one reason for the Shanahan et al. finding may have been their choice of .... etc." (Allison, 1989: 30) &
  "In a personal communication (1986), Oller, citing Dewey, contrasts narrative and descriptive varieties of text, the former ...etc." (Allison, 1989:30)
  Note the pattern, placed between 2 commas:
  ..., citing [Smith] (19??), ...
• quote - an example
  "Cummins & Swain (1986) quote Vygotsky's (1962: 110) suggestion that the ability to express the same thought in different languages enables a child to .... etc.." (Bruce, 1990:12).
  Note: with 'cite' and 'quote' we often need to use a 'that' clause: 'to quote X's suggestion that Y'. For more on 'that' clauses, see the CRM Ch.8 (p.152)

Ways of quoting
Say
"As Land and Whitley (1989) say, such readers of ESL writing allow the piece of writing at hand to develop slowly, like a photographic print shading in the details"
Note: It would be better to use other verbs than 'say' or 'state' - the most common options would be 'argue' and 'suggest'.

[brackets only]
Separatists read ESL texts generously, with a "cosmopolitan eye" (Leki, 1992)
Note: the page number should have been provided here, as the reader may want to see the full quotation.

Last updated 03 March 2003