I learned about citation methods from this week’s study. I think it’s very helpful, especially for writing research papers, the links provided in this module are very useful and they are great resources.

I am in the social science field, and we used APA style most of the time for assignments or research papers. I like the citation game and I got all 100% correct for APA as I am very familiar with it.  I first learned APA style while I was in Brown School of Social Work, Washington University in St. Louis. I have a deep impression about how I learned APA style as I had a great mentor. It was a very nice memory.

The first class assignment I wrote in U.S. university was the literature review paper for my Research Methods class that taught by Dr. Nancy Morrow-Howell. At that time, I didn’t know much about APA and I wrote the paper following the writing styles in China, and I didn’t cite properly either. It was the first few weeks in school, I also didn’t have the sense of using writing center or any other resources. After submitting the paper, Dr. Morrow-Howell emailed me and she said she would like to meet with me about my paper. During the meeting, she said she could see how hard I had worked on this paper, and she also explained to me about APA, citation, and how to summarize. She also helped me set up two more meetings with the instructor in the Brown School Writing Center, during the meeting, she explained to her about my issues and the instructor in the writing center offered me resources of APA styles and other writing techniques.

Dr. Morrow-Howell was very patient, and she let me rewrite that paper and she said the reason why she did all these was because she knew that was my first assignment, and she didn’t want me to make similar mistakes in my future writing assignments. I got 85 for that assignment in the end, even though the grade was not great, but both Dr. Morrow-Howell and me were pleased with it, as we all see my improvement along the way.  I really appreciate Dr. Morrow-Howell’s time and effort in helping me, and after that, I paid more attention to citations and writing, and I also feel that I want to become a professor like her in the future.