This section describes how student writer Patricia Lyu selected information from a source and integrated it into one part of her explanation of attachment. The following excerpt from Lyu’s essay illustrates a sound strategy for integrating sources into your essay, relying on them fully—as you nearly always must do in explanatory writing—and yet making them your own. Most of the information Lyu uses in this passage comes from an online report by psychologist R. Chris Fraley at the University of Illinois. Given her purpose—to identify the three types of attachment delineated by psychologist Mary Ainsworth—Lyu selects only a limited amount of information from Fraley’s publication.
Lyu relies on paraphrase to present the information she learned primarily from Fraley’s publication. When you paraphrase, you construct your own sentences but rely necessarily on the key words in your source. In the following comparison, the paraphrased sections are highlighted in yellow and key words are underlined:
| Patricia Lyu | R. Chris Fraley |
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...From this research, Ainsworth identified three basic types (“attachment styles”) of attachment bond that children form with their primary caregiver: secure, anxious (or anxious-resistant), and avoidant (Fraley 4). The secure child cries when the caregiver leaves but goes to the caregiver and calms down when he or she returns. According to Ainsworth, these children feel secure because their primary caregiver has been reliably responsive to their needs over the course of their short lives. Ainsworth classifies the other two styles of attachment as insecure compared to the first attachment style. Anxious children may be clingy, get very upset when the caregiver leaves, and seem afraid of the stranger. They do not calm down when the caregiver returns, crying inconsolably and seeming very mad at the caregiver. Avoidant children ignore the caregiver when he or she returns. They seem emotionally distant and may even move away from him or her to play with toys. |
In the strange situation, most children (i.e., about 60%) behave in the way implied by Bowlby’s “normative” theory. They become upset when the parent leaves the room, but, when he or she returns, they actively seek the parent and are easily comforted by him or her. Children who exhibit this pattern of behavior are often called secure. Other children (about 20% or less) are ill-at-ease initially, and, upon separation, become extremely distressed. Importantly, when reunited with their parents, these children have a difficult time being soothed, and often exhibit conflicting behaviors that suggest they want to be comforted, but that they also want to “punish” the parent for leaving. These children are often called anxious-resistant. The third pattern of attachment that Ainsworth and her colleagues documented is called avoidant. Avoidant children (about 20%) don’t appear too distressed by the separation, and, upon reunion, actively avoid seeking contact with their parent, sometimes turning their attention to play objects on the laboratory floor. |
Lyu’s writing illustrates a careful balance between a writer’s ideas and information gleaned from her source; she is careful not to let the sources take over the explanation. For the material cited from Fraley, she includes a parenthetical citation. Because Fraley is reporting information about Ainsworth’s experiment that is widely known and reported, Lyu uses Ainsworth’s name in the text—“According to Ainsworth”—and does not need to cite Fraley.