The use of sources among nonnative MA students, PhD students and university professors in second language writing: Direct quotations

This study addresses the use of sources by nonnative MA students, PhD students, and university professors with a focus on the use of direct quotations. The corpus of the study consisted of 100 research articles authored by university professors, 30 MA theses, and 30 PhD dissertations. The data were analyzed through descriptive statistics and some statistical tests including Mann Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis. The results of data analysis revealed that PhD students used direct quotations more frequently than both MA students and university professors. Furthermore, in all three groups the use of short quotation was more frequent than block quotation and there was a significant difference among the three groups in the use of both short and block quotations. Implications are discussed

Keywords:

direct quotation , source use