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Exploring APA Style (Reinforcement task)

Astrid M.Godoy.

0806199700180

Universidad Pedagógica Nacional Francisco Morazán.

Letters and Languages Department

FDI3107 English Didactics

Dr. Aleyda Linares

April 24th, 2020

Table of Contents.

Reflection …………………………………………………………………..3
Reference …………………………………………………………………...7
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APA Reflection

APA style is a very important issue which regards to all the students in their academic

lives. The following work is about a reflection on the APA format, which we use most of the

time whenever we deal with a university work, we have to be very careful and think twice at

the moment to apply it because it is very direct, and we have to follow the guidelines properly

in order to fulfill the expectations from the teachers, that is why this work specifically is

highlighting, it give us the opportunity to give a second look to the Seventh Edition, and

know which were the changes implied. Through the reflection I will emphasize the mistakes I

made, and how I can improve my future works, and I will also check the point which I

accomplish correctly.

As university students we have the task to learn every single way, there are different

techniques of learning, which teachers use: presentations, homework, quizzes, researches,

essays and moreover all these tasks imply an academic format, and the teachers from

Universidad Pedagógica Nacional Francisco Morazán use APA format. APA is related with

the organization of content, the writing style, citing references and how to prepare a

manuscript for publication in certain disciplines. According to Perdue University (n.d) the

Pros of APA are the following:

 Provide readers with cues they can use to follow your ideas more efficiently and to

locate information of interest to them

 Allow readers to focus more on your ideas by not distracting them with unfamiliar

formatting

 Establish your credibility or ethos in the field by demonstrating an awareness of your

audience and their needs as fellow researchers. (para.3).

The formats give order, clearness, a sequence, and the right rules in which we can use

other peoples’ works to verify our sources, and support our main ideas. The first thing I

should improve in my works is the front page, because I did not include it, just wrote my

personal information in the up part of the document, as I do in my essays. According to The

Manual of the American Psychological Association “ The Title Page elements are the

following: Title of the paper, Bold Title case, Author’s name, first name middle initial last

name, multiple authors in case, University name, Course number and name,insructor name,

assignment due date, page number (1) in the header” (paras. 2) .Unless there is other

assignation from the teacher, this is the formal cover page, and I notice I do not follow the

sequence entirely, I need to improve the order and add details I exclude. Another aspect to

take into account is including a table of contents to provide a view of the content of the

document.

The elements of the references are: WHO: Who authored the work, including the fact

either if it was individual or multiple people. WHEN: When was the work done or published.

WHAT: What is the Title of the work and finally WHERE: When it can be found and where

did I go to retrieve it. Creating the References is something that personally takes many time

for me, because you have to seek for all the element and many times, the information is not

complete, therefore it is confusing for me to know what to do in those cases, but after reading

the information provided in the links, I understand that if any of the elements I missing, then

you ignore it, and just not add it, you continue with the stipulated form.
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After reading the manuals, I understand that many times I make mistakes regarding to

the rightness of my references, which I will improve with practice, also I include other

references that I did not cite along the document. A fact which I did not know about the

References page that they have to be alphabetically organized and that each reference has a

hanging indent of 0.5 inches, also what is the differences between references and

bibliographies which is that in the reference contains works that specifically support ideas,

claims, and concepts in a paper, and bibliography refers to works that we use for background

or further reading. Personally I confuse the reference and bibliography in the task 2 about the

analysis of the different lesson plans, because I mixed both things within the reference

.Otherwise I manage the parenthetical In- text citation correctly (author name, publication

date). When we do not found the name of the author then we include the work title which is

italicized.

When a citation is more than forty words, the whole citation goes does, with not

quotation marks in a free-standing block of typewritten lines and you give an introductory

line which the Authors name and the date of the publication and at the end of the information

you add the page number from where you took the information specifically, in case there is

not a number page then we include the paragraph number from which we obtained the

information. I need to improve my works by including either the page or paragraph number,

because I do not have the habit to do it, I just include the name of the author and the

publication year. According to The Purdue University (nd):

Your essay should be typed and double-spaced on standard-sized paper (8.5" x 11"),

with 1" margins on all sides. You should use a font consistently throughout the paper.

APA recommends using either a sans serif font such as 11-point Calibri, 11-point

Arial, or 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode, or a serif font such as 12-point Times New

Roman, 11-point Georgia, or 10-point Computer Modern. (para. 1).

I do not have any trouble with the APA format; I write my academic works under the

established standards, the only detail I forget somehow is to establish the margin on all sides

of the page. My works are always written in Times New Romans 12 though. The guidelines

APA Seventh Edition give are used for Academic and formal criteria, therefore it is very

important for us as students, and future teachers to know them, understand them, and put

them into practice.

As a conclusion, we checked the alignments that APA establishes to fulfill an

academic work, under their domain, I made a personal review about the mistakes I make and

how I will correct them for future works from the university. Giving a second eye peak to the

Seventh edition made me reflect about the fact that as future teacher we have to be constantly

renewing the information we have, and refresh it as possible. The educational system is

constantly changing and we have to adapt to those changes.

References:

Purdue Writing Lab. (n.d.). In-Text Citations: The Basics // Purdue Writing Lab.

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_an
d_style_guide/in_text_citations_the_basics.html

Purdue Writing Lab. (n.d.). General Format // Purdue Writing Lab.

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_an
d_style_guide/general_format.html

Purdue Writing Lab. (n.d.). APA Overview and Workshop // Purdue Writing Lab.

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_overview_and_works

hop.html