Understanding Source Abstracts for MLA Research

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This video provides step-by-step explanations for creating source abstracts for MLA research, emphasizing the purpose, format, and importance of these abstracts in developing research papers and projects.

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Understanding Source Abstracts for MLA Research

Timeline




	00:00	(Beginning of video)

	00:00	Introduction

	00:00	Hello students. This video is to help you understand how to create a source abstract.

	00:05	So from the MLA Literary Based Research Instructional Materials module, I'm going to open up the document Source Abstracts.

	00:21	Providing Step-by-step Explanations

	00:21	And here I've provided step by step explanations for how to create a source abstract.

	00:27	So you can take the time to read through this after you view the video.

	00:31	And I've also given you an explanation of what each of the entries are for the source abstract.

	00:37	But for the purposes of this video, I'm just going to look at an actual source abstract itself to explain.

	00:43	So the purpose of the source abstract is to, when you find a source, is to pull out the part of the information you need from that source and document it on an abstract.

	00:54	Purpose of Source Abstracts

	00:54	The term abstract does not mean you can't see it.

	00:57	The term abstract means a part of.

	01:00	So when you get into your upper level courses at a university and you do a great deal of research, you'll have sources that are very, very in depth, multi paged.

	01:11	And you don't want to keep flipping through that source to find what you need.

	01:14	You have a specific purpose for your research.

	01:16	So when you get into that source, you want to pull out only the information that you may need in a paper or a project or a product.

	01:25	So, so this is what you will do.

	01:27	For each source that you have, you will have a source abstract.

	01:32	Do not overlap sources on the same abstract.

	01:36	One source gets its own abstract, another source gets its own abstract.

	01:40	So you should have five source abstracts.

	01:43	So this is the heading for a source abstract.

	01:46	You just fill in the blanks, you don't have to do the underscores.

	01:49	And then of course, here's your bibliographic citation.

	01:52	So you should have already created your bibliography page and you go in and for whichever source you're using, you copy and paste that bibliographic citation.

	02:00	Creating Source Abstracts

	02:00	And this tells you that everything on this page then corresponds to just this particular source.

	02:07	Now on your bibliography page, your bibliography entries are double spaced for the purposes of an abstract.

	02:13	You can keep them single spaced just to save space on this page.

	02:17	So anything that's in bold you need to type out.

	02:20	So article topic, you'll type out article topic with the colon.

	02:23	It needs to be in bold.

	02:25	Now do not just put the title of the source, but what topic or topics are you going to include on this source?

	02:33	So this is an actual student example.

	02:36	So for this one she wrote Sylvia Plath's Poetic Style.

	02:40	So that's the information that's going to be provided on this abstract.

	02:43	When you get into your upper level courses and you have multi source abstracts.

	02:48	You don't want to read through those all the time either.

	02:50	So you just look at whatever topics you're looking for.

	02:53	So article topic, you may pull more than one topic from your source that may be article topics and it might be Sylvia Plath's poetic style and her early education.

	03:03	Whatever the case may be, that's the identifier that you'll put for the article topic.

	03:08	The next section is overall point and everyone should start.

	03:13	The purpose of this source is.

	03:15	And so you will start with that signal phrase.

	03:17	And after you've read the source you will put into your own third person formal language what is the purpose of that source?

	03:24	So you could say the purposes of this source are.

	03:28	If there's multi purposes and then you give it an explanation is to explain how Plath's life influenced her style of poetry writing.

	03:37	The author Dana Levin includes how she felt, meaning Plath felt the pressures of the society to be the stereotypical woman and sought to change their views as a result.

	03:47	The author explains that many of Plath's poems reflect her struggle with self identity.

	03:51	So this is the overall point or the overall points as to why the author wrote that source.

	03:57	And so you want to expound upon the overall point or points in that section.

	04:01	Importance of Documentation

	04:01	Now this is a very important section, not that all of them aren't, but this one is very important because this is the information that you will use specifically in your paper.

	04:12	Knowing that your purpose is to prove how your author's life influenced his or her poem or short story.

	04:19	Knowing that you have to develop two key aspects of the author's life.

	04:23	Give an analysis of your selection and then draw the conclusions where you see the author's life having influenced that selection.

	04:31	So I want to show you that every sentence in this section, the paraphrase and direct quote, should have a parenthetical citation in MLA 8 and it should correspond to this source.

	04:42	So it's going to be 11.

	04:43	Because MLA 8 says if it has an author, it's the author's last name and then a page range and it has to match.

	04:50	And so look, here is a paraphrase.

	04:54	Exceptional styles often come from the personal trials and sometimes at great cost.

	04:59	Open parentheses 11, no comma or page indicator like P or P G.

	05:05	And then the number two tells us page two.

	05:07	And then for this, here's another paraphrase.

	05:10	Plath's plea for self identity in her poetic style are such examples.

	05:14	And this came from Levin, page four.

	05:17	Now notice this, here's a direct quote her style.

	05:21	So that's the signal phrase.

	05:22	And here's your direct quote.

	05:24	Open the quotation mark is shaped by a struggle to overcome the forces of literary heritage, societal expectations, and even biological destiny.

	05:31	Close quotation marks, open that parenthesis, Author's last name, page number, close parentheses, and a period.

	05:38	So again, every sentence has to have a parenthetical citation.

	05:43	If this were paragraphs and not true page numbers, then you would need to change this to paragraphs and then whatever the paragraph range would be.

	05:53	And then down here in your documentation you would put par.

	05:58	And then whichever paragraph it came off of, maybe this was paragraph 20.

	06:02	So they have to correspond.

	06:05	I will check that when I check your papers to make sure that whatever your bibliographic citation is, it has a direct match within the text of your paper.

	06:13	So every sentence has to have a documentation because you don't know where you're going to use that in your paper.

	06:17	Reaction and Annotation

	06:17	Then your reaction section are your third person commentaries about what you read.

	06:22	So notice what this student read after she read this source by Dana Levin.

	06:27	Here was the student's thoughts.

	06:29	Plath wanted to be treated equally.

	06:31	She not only wrote of this, but also wrote of her struggles to find out who she really was.

	06:35	She set the way for the next generation of women to realize that they did not have to be the stereotypical woman.

	06:41	So notice this, that anything on this source abstract you can use in a paper.

	06:47	So you could edit this, you could take this out eventually when you move it over to your paper, and you could say Plath's life influenced her style of poetry writing.

	06:59	And then you could say Plath felt the pressures of society to be the stereotypical woman.

	07:06	As a result, many of Plath's poems reflect her struggle with self identity.

	07:12	You could edit that to fit somewhere, wherever you need it in your paper.

	07:15	Notice to the reaction.

	07:17	This sounds like a great conclusion.

	07:19	Of course you don't want to have contractions, so you would just unwrap that.

	07:22	But you can plug this in within the body of your paper when you are developing whatever parts of it that you are about her poetry style of writing or about her life, wherever it fits or the connection.

	07:36	You would use your paraphrases and direct quotes wherever they are most appropriate.

	07:40	So the purpose of this source abstract is to take the information from your source, document it in an abstract in a document where you can then go back and directly use it instead of having to go back to that source and thumb through it over and over again.

	07:56	Using Source Abstracts in Research

	07:56	So each source gets its own abstract.

	07:59	Now what I want you to understand too now is after you create your abstracts that's conducted your research, you're going to go back over here and you're going to create your specific outline.

	08:11	Based on this general outline, you're going to plug in that particular information that you found from your research.

	08:17	And you just plug it in and you have a specific outline.

	08:21	And then to create your rough draft, what you're going to do is you're going to have your specific outline and you're going to say, okay, I need to briefly introduce my author.

	08:30	Where do I have any background information that would be good there from my source abstracts?

	08:35	So you have all five of your abstracts open and then you just copy and paste.

	08:39	So understand your rough draft comes together by having your specific outline married with your abstracts.

	08:47	And then you're going to use the revision and editing rubric to make it a readable document.

	08:51	And there will be a video about the revision and editing rubric coming up.

	08:56	But this video is meant to cover the source abstracts with you.

	08:59	Final Thoughts and Next Steps

	08:59	And understand that after you create your specific outline, then in the scope and the sequence of your outline, you're going to copy and paste the information that you have documented in your source abstracts.

	09:12	The source abstracts should take you the longest to create.

	09:15	You should be very tedious when you're working with these, because if you do a great job on your source abstracts, your paper will come together very easily according to your outline.

	09:25	So please revisit this document for source abstracts as many times as you need to and this video as many times as you need to, as well as all of the links links and the instructional materials section and the MLA research tools.

	09:41	(End of video)


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