How to Use Sources Without Losing Your Voice

In their research-based essays, students often mimic the dry, formal tone they find in so many of the scholarly sources they quote and paraphrase. Their previous instructors have often taught them that it’s inappropriate to use first person or to otherwise craft a distinct authorial voice and presence—what Columbia University Director of Undergraduate Writing Programs Nicole B. Wallack celebrates as “the presence of the writer on the page” (20).¹ In this activity, students read and analyze excerpts from two scholarly works that use sources substantially but that have different degrees of voice and presence. Students can learn to recognize and appreciate the range of rhetorical choices—and voices—available to them as academic writers.

Author: Erik Ellis

Course: PWR1 / PWR2

Activity length and schedule: This activity works best before students draft their research-based argument.

Overview of Activity goals:

1. Help students think about how, when, and why academic writers quote, paraphrase, and otherwise use scholarly sources.
2. Show students the value of blending the rigorous use of scholarly sources with their own voice and presence.
3. Encourage students to expand their understanding of academic writing—to see that it doesn’t need to be stuffy to be credible and persuasive.
4. Motivate students to feel more invested in their own academic writing.
5. Help students recognize “objectivity bias” and appreciate the value of ethos as “character.”
6. Encourage students to develop their own voice vs. automatically and uncritically mimicking the “neutral” (non-)voice of much academic writing.
7. Demystify the belief that first person doesn’t belong in academic writing.
8. Help students see that first person isn’t the only way to create voice and presence in academic writing.
9. Encourage students to think about what makes academic writing compelling for them personally—and how to use those qualities in their own writing.
10. Support students’ agency as academic writers—their freedom to choose how they use sources, how they project their voice, and how they craft a presence that readers can identify with.

Activity details: See Erik's handout for a detailed explanation of the activity and this folder for linked materials.

1. Wallack, Nicole B. Crafting Presence: The American Essay and the Future of Writing Studies. Utah State University Press, 2016.