how to use secondary sources in an essay

Academic Writing

Getting Started
Introductions
Thesis Statements
Organization
Conclusions

Using Secondary Sources

Global vs. Local Revision
Suggestions for Revision
Why is Grammar Important?
Suggestions for Further Reading
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What are Primary and Secondary Sources?
Using Summary
Make Your Sources Speak

What Are Primary and Secondary Sources?

A primary source is a source that you are analyzing as the writer. In other words, there is no mediary between you and the text; you are the one doing the analysis.

Some examples of primary sources:

A secondary source , then, is a source that has also done analysis of the same (or a similar) topic. You will then use this source to discuss how it relates to your argument about the primary source. A secondary source is a mediary between you and the primary source. Secondary sources can also help your credibility as a writer; when you use them in your writing, it shows that you have done research on the topic, and can enter into the conversation on the topic with other writers.

Some examples of secondary sources:

Summary: When and How Do I Use It?

One of the important distinctions to make when coming to terms with a text is knowing when to summarize it, when to paraphrase it, and when to quote it. Here’s what Joseph Harris, author of the textbook Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts , has to say:

“Summarize when what you have to say about a text is routine and quote when it is more contentious” (21).

In other words, quote when you need to rely on the voice of the writer, when you need the language of the text to help you make a point. Otherwise, try to use paraphrase or summary, so that your ideas are still the main focus.

Summarizing a text can distract your reader from your argument, especially if you rely on lengthy summaries to capture a source in a nutshell. However, it can also prove an effective rhetorical tool: you just need to know when to use it.

You can use summary in the following ways:

- When the source offers important background about your ideas

- When you need to provide your readers with an overview of a source’s entire argument before analyzing certain ideas from it

- When the source either supports your thesis, or when it offers a position you want to argue against or analyze more in-depth

Here is a sample summary. What do you notice about it?

Ryuko Kubota argues in “Ideologies of English in Japan” that the debate over English’s place in the Japanese language disappeared with the militaristic rule of the 1930s and 1940s, when Japan rejected and/or suppressed the learning of English and other languages in favor of heavy nationalism. However, he adds that the debate returned during America’s occupation of Japan and has periodically been a topic for debate since. Japanese politicians have always seen English as an important tool for Japan’s success as an industrial nation on a global scale. However, instead of molding itself to the English of the Western world, Japan has integrated English to fit its ideologies, to serve its own needs; indeed, to become part of the Japanese language.

1. This is a succinct summary; the entire summary is only three sentences.

2. The final sentence of the paragraph is the writer's attempt to make a connection between the article and her own ideas for her paper. This is an important step in using summary; it's important to always show the reader how/why the summary is important/relevant.

Paraphrasing: When/How/Why Should I Do It?

Paraphrasing gives you the room to condense a text’s ideas into your own words. You can use this, for example, to rewrite a definition, to emphasize important points, or to clarify ideas that might be hard for the reader to understand if you quote the original text.

When you paraphrase, remember that you still need to cite the source in-text!

Depending on your field and the style guide your field follows, you may be required to paraphrase more than quote or summarize. Make sure you are familiar with the writing conventions for your field. APA, for example, draws much more on paraphrase than MLA.

Example of a Paraphrase

Let’s look at an example of a paraphrase. Note that here the author of this paraphrase has used the author’s name first as an attributive tag – she is letting the reader know who wrote this. She then goes on to put the writer’s ideas into her own words, but acknowledges directly where the ideas came from by using the in-text citation at the end of the second sentence.

- This is a paraphrase for MLA; in APA, the year would come after Honna's name in parentheses.

In source-based or synthesis writing, we try to not only express our ideas using our own voice, but to also express our ideas through the voices of those we are citing. In their book Wriiting Analytically , Rosenwasser and Stephen offer six strategies to use in researched writing to make our sources speak, to make them come alive.

Here are some typical problems we encounter when using primary and secondary sources:

- Leaving quotations and paraphrases to speak for themselves

- Not differentiating your own voice from the voices of your sources (ventriloquizing)

- Resorting to overly agreeing and disagreeing as your only means of responding to a source (other than summary)

Primary and secondary sources are nothing to fear. Many times we either leave sources to speak for themselves or ignore them altogether because we are afraid of losing our own voices. These strategies, listed below, are designed to help us know when and how to use quotes, and how not to become lost in the process.

Strategy 1: Make Your Sources Speak

v Quote, paraphrase, or summarize in order to analyze , as opposed to in place of analyzing. Don’t assume that the meaning of your source material is self-evident. Instead, explain to your readers what the quote, paraphrase, or summary means. For example, what aspects do you find interesting or strange? And relate these aspects to your overall thesis. Your focus here in analysis should be on how the source leads you to your conclusion – beware of generalizing or putting two quotes next to each other without explaining the connection.

Using Strategy #1 : How are you using your sources? Are you taking the time to develop points from your sources, or are you just using evidence – and is it clear why you are using it? Highlight/bracket analysis, mark in a different color where analysis is not present immediately following source.

Strategy 2: Use Your Sources to Ask Questions, Not Just to Provide Answers

v Use your selections from your sources as a means to raise issues and questions; avoid the temptation to use selections that provide answers without any commentary or further elaboration. If you feel stuck with this, consider the source alongside other contexts (other sources, for example) and compare and contrast them to see if there are aspects of your topic that your source does not adequately address.

Using Strategy #2: Again, ask: how are you using your sources as question generators? What how/why questions do your sources generate? Look over the evidence you’ve used, and jot down the how/why questions you think your evidence creates. Next, go through your paper. Do you see yourself addressing these questions? Mark your analysis appropriately so you can see how you’re addressing these questions (or not).

Strategy 3: Put Your Sources in Conversation with One Another

v This is an extension of strategy 2. Rather than limiting yourself to the only conversationalist with each source, aim for conversation among them. Although it is not wrong to agree or disagree with your sources, it is wrong to see these as your only possible moves. You should also understand that although it is sometimes useful and perhaps even necessary to agree or disagree, these judgments should 1) always be qualified and 2) occur only in certain contexts . Instead of looking just at how you agree or disagree, try to imagine what these critics might say to one another. Looking at sources in this way may prove useful as you explore your topics further in depth.

Using Strategy #3:

This is a way for your sources to address one another directly, while also giving you more room to expand on your ideas through a slightly different form of analysis. For example: what might the person you interviewed think about the secondary sources you found? Would they agree with the claims you see your sources making, or would they disagree? Why – what about their interview suggests this? Make a list of possible dialogues your sources could have with one another.

Strategy 4: Find Your Own Role in the Conversation

v Even though it’s important to not be the only person in the essay agreeing and disagreeing with the texts, it is important that you establish what you think and feel about each source. After all, something compelled you to choose it, right? In general, you have two options when you are in agreement with a source. You can apply it in another context to qualify or expand its implications, or you can seek out other perspectives in order to break the hold it has on you. In the first option, to do this, instead of focusing on the most important point, choose a lesser yet equally interesting point and work on developing that idea to see if it holds relevance to your topic. The second option can also hold new perspectives if you allow yourself to be open to the possibilities of other perspectives that may or may not agree with your original source.

Using Strategy #4: While it’s important that you create a distinct voice for all the different kinds of sources you’ve used (interview, fieldwork, scholarly journals/books, etc.), it’s perhaps even more important that you have a clear role in this conversation that is your research essay. Look over your paper: is it clear what you think? Is it clear what is your voice, and what are the ideas/opinions of your sources? (Hint: your voice should still be clear in the midst of your sources, if you are taking the time to analyze them and develop your analysis as fully as possible.) Highlight places where you voice – what you think – is clear. Highlight in a different color places where your voice is unclear, or needs to be expressed more fully.

Strategy 5: Supply Ongoing Analysis of Sources (Don’t Wait Until the End)

v Instead of summarizing everything first and then leaving your analysis until the end, analyze as you quote or paraphrase a source . This will help yield good conversation, by integrating your analysis of your sources into your presentation of them.

Using Strateg y #5:

Are your sources presented throughout the paper with careful analysis attending to each one? Or are you presenting all your sources first, and analyzing them later? Look through your paper, and mark places where you see yourself not analyzing your sources as you go. Also: are there places where you see too much analysis, and not enough evidence? Be sure to mark those places as well.

Strategy 6: Attend Carefully to the Language of Your Sources by Quoting or Paraphrasing Them

v Rather than generalizing broadly about the ideas in your sources, you should spell out what you think is significant about their key words. Quote sources if the actual language they use is important to your point; this practice will help you to present the view of your source fairly and accurately. Your analysis will also benefit from the way the source represents its position (which may or may not be your position) with carefully chosen words and phrases. Take advantage of this, and use the exact language to discuss the relevance (or not) of the quote to the issue you’re using it for.

Using Strategy #6: When paraphrasing or quoting a source, it’s important that you use the language of the source to help explain it – it keeps the reader in the moment with you, and helps him/her understand the key terms of that source – why you chose, why these words are so important, etc. Look over your evidence, both quoted and paraphrased: are you using the language of the quote to help explain it? Or is your analysis removed from the “moment of the source” (i.e. the language which the source uses to illustrate its point)? Mark places where you think it’s important to use the language of the source to help analyze and develop the evidence more completely.

Strategies for Using Quotes
Floating Quotations
How to Integrate Quotations

Attributed Quotations

Integrated Quotations

Strategies for Using Quotations In-Text

Acknowledge sources in your text, not just in citations:

“According to Lewis” or “Whitney argues.”

Use a set-up phrase, and splice the most important part of quotations in with your own words:

According to Paul McCartney, “All you need is love.”

Or phrase it with a set-up:

Patrick Henry’s famous phrase is one of the first American schoolchildren memorize:

“Give me liberty, or give me death.”

Anytime you use a quote, cite your source after the quotation:

Maxine Greene might attribute this resistance to “vaguely perceived expectations; they

allow themselves to be programmed by organizations and official schedules or forms” (43).

Use ellipses to shorten quotations:

“The album ‘OK Computer’ …pictured the onslaught of the information age and a young

person’s panicky embrace of it” (Ross 85) .

Use square brackets to alter or add information within a quotation:

Popular music has always “[challenged] the mores of the older generation,” according to

Nick Hornby.

Acc ording to Janet Gardner in her book Writing About Literature , there are three ways that we tend to use quotes:

Gardner advocates that we stay away from “floating quotations,” use at least an “attributed quotation,” and use “integrated quotations” as much as possible.

You will recognize a floating quotation when it looks as though the writer has simply lifted the passage from the original text, put quotations around it, and (maybe) identified the source.

Doing this can create confusion for the reader, who is left to guess the context and the reason for the quote.

This type of quoting reads awkward and choppy because there is no transition between your words and the language of the text you are quoting.

Example of a Floating Quotation; text taken from All She was Worth , by Miyuki Miyabe

Both Honma and Kyoko were rejected and looked down upon by Jun and Chizuko’s family when entering into marriage with their respective partners. “About her cousin – Jun’s father – and his family: what snobs they were, with fixed ideas on education and jobs” ( Miyabe 17).This passage shows that Honma and Kyoko were both being judged by their future in-laws by superficial stipulations.

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Citations: Secondary Sources

Nontraditional sources: secondary sources video.

Nontraditional Sources: Secondary Sources (video transcript)

Basics of Secondary Sources

Secondary sources often are defined in contrast to primary sources. In a primary source, an author shares his or her original research—whether it be case study findings, experiment results, interview materials, or clinical observations. However, in a secondary source, an author focuses on presenting other scholars’ research, such as in a literature review.

When trying to distinguish between a primary and secondary source, it is important to ask yourself:

Who originally made the discoveries or brought the conclusions in this document to light?
Did the author conduct the study his or herself?
Or is the author recounting the work of other authors?

For further guidance on determining the difference between primary and secondary sources, see Walden Library’s “Evaluating Resources: Primary & Secondary Sources” page .

Citing a Source Within a Source

Secondary sources refer to sources that report on the content of other published sources.

Citing a source within a source (citing a secondary source) is generally acceptable within academic writing as long as these citations are kept to a minimum. You should use a secondary source only if you are unable to find or retrieve the original source of information. However, if you need to cite a source within a source, follow the guidelines from APA 7, Section 8.6.

For example, imagine that you found a quotation from Culver that you wish to use in your text; however, you found this information in Jones and were unable to locate Culver’s original source. For this reference, Culver would be the primary source, and Jones would be the secondary source. You will name the primary source in your text, but the reference and citations will credit the secondary source:

According to Culver (2006, as cited in Jones, 2009), learning APA "can be tough, but like any skill, it just takes practice" (p. 23). In addition, the mastery of APA increases an author's chance of scoring well on an assignment (Culver, 2006, as cited in Jones, 2009).

Corresponding Reference List Entry

Cite just the secondary source in your reference list.

Jones, J. (2009). Scholarly writing tips . Minneapolis, MN: Publishing House.

Secondary source citations are not just for direct quotations. For instance, when referencing Rogers's adult learning theory, if you did not find the information in Rogers, your citations for the material should be in secondary source format.

Note : When citing primary material, the original publication date is usually unneeded. Following the primary author's name with the year in parentheses, like Culver (2006), indicates that you are directly citing the original source. To avoid confusion, just include the year of the secondary source in your text, like Culver (as cited in Jones, 2009).