Often, the final stage of writing an academic paper is formatting and completing the bibliography and correctly referencing all the sources you refer to in the body of your text. There are many ways to do this depending on the subject of your writing.

It might be the last, but it is a vital stage in the academic writing process. As such, it is essential you correctly reference each and every source you refer to in your writing. If you do not, it might be deemed as plagiarism, the act of appropriating someone else’s ideas or claims as your own. When done deliberately, plagiarism can lead to very severe consequences that tarnish a writer’s academic reputation. Of course, students can sometimes plagiarize accidentally, especially if they are unsure of how to properly acknowledge other academics’ work, but it is something you should try to avoid.

When writing in a foreign language, it can often be tempting to ‘borrow’ (or directly copy) someone else’s idea. However, this would be considered plagiarism. You need to find your own voice and writing style. As you read through secondary sources to help develop your argument, focus on the sections that contain key ideas, highlight them, or make detailed notes, but then summarize them in your own words without looking at the source. Not only will you learn to develop your own style, but you will see if you have really understood everything you read!

The structure of your final project will be unique. However, some of the ideas you present in the main discussion will be based on the reading you did during the research stage. Every time you paraphrase one of these ideas (i.e., refer to it using your own words), you will need to reference the original author and their work, especially if you directly quote a fellow academic. This way, you are essentially letting the reader know that this idea is not your own, but that you have read around the subject.


The writer has lifted an idea directly from the original author’s work. Therefore, they have introduced the quote between quotation marks and referenced it immediately after, using the reference style of the Modern Language Association. This reference will also appear in their alphabetized bibliography (or Works cited) at the end of their paper.


So, one option when referencing another writer’s ideas is to directly quote them, as we see above. However, you can also paraphrase their ideas. Consider the following example, where the writer’s original ideas in Spanish (Poyato, 2014) are then paraphrased in the final project.  

“...elidida en la novela, la boda cobra una presencia extraordinaria en el filme, donde es escenificada como boda negra —caracterización a la que contribuye la escenografía de funeral— en sintonía con una vinculación entre la boda y la muerte recurrente en el texto buñueliano.”

 
Here, the writer has paraphrased an idea presented by another author. They have used it to support their own argument and woven it smoothly into the text by rewording the academic’s contribution to contrast their own argument. Even though the original is in a different language to the paper, the same plagiarism rules apply. The writer has once again used the MLA referencing style for their in-text citations.

Even when paraphrasing, you can still mention the author’s name and use introductory phrases to present these paraphrased ideas.


Finally, remember the difference between the Works cited (or References) section and the Bibliography: Works cited is a formatted list of all the sources cited within your text, and it can also include non-literary sources such as audiovisual media; on the other hand, the Bibliography section is a formatted list of all the sources you consulted (but did not necessarily cite) for your final project.