If English is not your strongest language, you may find it useful to borrow and adapt transitional devices and pieces of sentence structure from other people’s writing in the genre you are working in. You should not copy the whole sentence or sentence structure, however, or your borrowed sentences may seem plagiarized (Chapter 18). Find sample sentence structures from similar genres but on different topics so that you borrow a typical structure (which does not belong to anyone) rather than the idea or the particular phrasing. Write your own sentences first, and look at other people’s sentences only to guide your revision.
The example on p. 596 illustrates effective borrowing. The student writer borrows phrases that are commonly used in academic writing in the social sciences to perform particular functions. Notice how the student also modifies these phrases to suit the needs of the writing situation.
| Original Abstract from a Social Science Paper | Effective Borrowing of Structures from a Genre |
| Using the interpersonal communications research of J. K. Brilhart and G. J. Galanes, and W. Wilmot and J. Hocker, along with T. Hartman’s personality assessment, I observed and analyzed the leadership roles and group dynamics of my project collaborators in a communications course. Based on results of the Hartman personality assessment, I predicted that a single leader would emerge. However, complementary individual strengths and gender differences encouraged a distributed leadership style, in which the group experienced little confrontation and conflict. Conflict, because it was handled positively, was crucial to the group’s progress. | Drawing on the research of Deborah Tannen on men’s and women’s conversational styles, I analyzed the conversational styles of six first-year students at DePaul University. Based on Tannen’s research, I expected that the three men I observed would use features typical of male conversational style and the three women would use features typical of female conversational style. In general, these predictions were accurate; however, some exceptions were also apparent. |