Choosing Evidence For Your Essay

Choosing Evidence For Your Essay

Choosing Evidence

• When you are reading articles to write your own essay, it's very important to choose the right evidence.

• Evidence is text you choose from an article to support the point you are trying to make

Multiple Choice

Evidence goes

• at the beginning of a paragraph

• sandwiched between two pieces of commentary

• at the end of a paragraph

Writing Out Evidence

• Evidence must be written WORD FOR WORD exactly as it is written in the original text

Multiple Choice

What goes around evidence text to show that you got it from somewhere else?

• apostrophes

• parentheses

• quotation marks

Multiple Choice

What does it mean to cite your evidence?

• to name the article and/or author you got the information from

• to put it in a special font so it stands out

• to put your evidence in quotation marks

Citing Evidence

• Citing evidence means you are giving credit or recognition to the person who wrote it.

• It's very important for you to cite your evidence. Otherwise, it's considered plagiarism because it looks as though are stealing someone else's words.

• When you cite evidence, you can do so at the beginning or the end of your evidence sentence.

Citing Evidence Part 2

• Citing evidence at the beginning of your sentence might look like:

• Andrew Smith from New York University says, "evidence goes here"

• Citing evidence at the end of your sentence might look like:

• "Evidence goes here," (Andrew Smith, New York University)

• It is also okay to cite evidence by listing your source, especially if you cannot find the author. It might look like:

• "Evidence goes here," (source 2, "Can Robots Fly")

Multiple Choice

When your evidence isn't in quotation marks and it doesn't cite the source, what is it considered?

• pirated

• commentary

• plagiarized

• a counterclaim

Multiple Choice

Can you use the same piece of evidence more than once in your essay?

• yes

• no

One of a Kind Evidence

• When you choose a piece of evidence, you can only use that piece of evidence ONCE in your essay.

• So you need to find a few pieces of evidence, because you'll need at least one piece of evidence for each body paragraph.

Choosing the Right Evidence

• The evidence you choose should be something you can add your own knowledge and thoughts to.

• Don't pick evidence that isn't going to help you.

• GO FOR THE OBVIOUS!

• You want to be able to add commentary to the evidence, so make sure you pick something that you CAN actually add to.

Open Ended

Why is it important for you to choose the right evidence for your essay?