Placing academic literacy at the forefront: How to write proper in-text citations and references

 The American Psychological Association (APA) is responsible for regulating academic writing conventions, and as such, establishes a style for documenting sources and other authors' work in papers. In the light of the academic literacy requirements presented in the 6th edition of APA's (2010) Publication Manual, the purpose of this analysis is to reflect on the application of APA's guidelines on reference lists and in-text citations in the article Beyond Reflection: Teacher Learning as Praxis by Hoffman-Kipp, Artiles and López-Torres (2003). As for in-text citations, these are included within the body of academic papers and are used to give details of cited bibliography, such as authors' surnames, publication dates and, when quoting other authors' words directly, page numbers (APA, 2010). With regard to reference pages, APA (2010) states that they should be a comprehensive list of the literature cited in the body of the paper. After an examination of the article, we will exemplify and judge the implementation of APA style by the authors of the paper in order to help ELT teachers, teacher educators and researchers foster the essential academic literacy skills  for essay/ papers writing in the context of continuous professional development.

 Regarding the etiquette expected for in-text citations, the authors of the article partially comply with the prescriptions in APA manual. There are some instances of inaccuracies, for example, the first parenthetical citation of a work by multiple authors features the name of only one of the six authors followed by et al., namely ''(Crawford et al., 1994, p. 174)'' (Hoffman-Kipp, et al., 2003, p. 248). As indicated by APA (2010), the first in-text citation of a work by multiple authors should contain all the authors' surnames, whereas in subsequent citations one surname alone is necessary and this must be followed by et. al. Moreover, the passage ''Engestrom explains(...)'' (Hoffman-Kipp, et al., 2003, p. 250) shows the absence of the date of publication immediately after the author's name, as it should be done in citations included narratively (APA, 2010). Furthermore, the authors of this paper omit the letter p of page number in the parenthetical citation ''(Cole, 1996, 121)'' (Hoffman-Kipp, et al., 2003, p. 252). Despite some irregularities, the majority of the dates of publications, authors' surnames as well as page numbers are added appropriately both in paraphrased citations and quotations respectively. Examples of correct use of in-text citations following APA style are "(Morrow & Torres, 1995)" and "(Holquist & Emmerson, as cited in Wertsch, 1991, p. 57)" (Hoffman-Kipp, et al., 2003, p. 253) among others.

Regarding the reference list, the sources are arranged alphabetically by author's surname, however, some entries contain errors in style. In the first place, the references are not on a separated sheet of paper, as it is indicated by APA (2010), but immediately after the conclusion and final notes. In the second place, in reference to papers published in book forms, book titles should be written in title case (APA, 2010) but in some entries such convention is not adhered to. An example of such inaccuracy is "Cazden, C. (1993). Vygotsky, Hymes, and Bakhtin: From word to utterance and voice. In E.A. Forman, N. Minick, & C.A. Stone (Eds.), Contexts for learning: Sociocultural dynamics in children’s development (pp. 197-212) (...)" (Hoffman-Kipp, et al., 2003, p. 254). Similarly, titles of journals should also exhibit title case (APA, 2010), a requirement which is not complied with in "Lindsay, A., & Mason, R. (2000). Focusing on reflection with early childhood practitioners. Networks: An online journal for teacher research, 3(2)(...)" (Hoffman-Kipp, et al., 2003, p. 254); in that reference in particular, Hoffman et. al., (2003) also fail to specify the page range of the cited article. A further deviation from APA (2010) style is reflected in the absence of some location details, like country names and major cities, as this reference from Hoffman et al. (2003) shows: "Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Harmondsworth: Penguin." (Hoffman-Kipp, et al., 2003, p. 254). In spite of some inaccurate uses of APA style, the authors write most of the references in complete and appropriate ways by respecting punctuation, the use of italics in journal and book titles, as well as the inclusion of publication dates, volume and issue numbers where necessary.    

To conclude, the authors of this article seem partly to follow the specifications regarding citations and references required by APA (2010). Therefore, we should stress the importance of writing in-text citations and references properly following the 6th edition of APA manual (2010), since when composing academic papers, it is essential to acknowledge sources accurately in order to guide readers and fellow writers in the ELT field toward potentially valuable bibliography.

References

American Psychological Association (2010). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Hoffman-Kipp, P., Artiles, A., & López-Torres, L. (2003). Beyond Reflection: Teacher Learning as Praxis. Theory Into Practice,  42 (3), 248-254. Retrieved from https://muse.jhu.edu/article/45873