Using Quotations and Paraphrasing in Journalistic Writing/Post-Class Activities/Version 1
These activities will build on the skills you have already learned. You will be working with another interview transcript to gain more practice in selecting quotes and paraphrasing material, but will begin by considering how to re-order quotes from an interview to make the resultant news article more engaging.
Recall that it is acceptable, and often necessary, to re-order quotes to make them slot in better with the story you are telling; it is very rare that you will receive good, coherent quotes in the order you need when interviewing somebody, and/or you might decide to write your story from a different angle based on what your interviewee tells you. The important thing is to make sure that you do not misrepresent your source.
Questions 1 and 2 (4 marks each, 8 marks total)
For each of the following two questions, try to first choose the most effective opening to the story (1 mark) before ordering the three related quotes in the most effective way possible (3 marks) to make your story interesting and engaging. Copy and paste the opening to the story you like best, and then copy and paste the quotes in the order you think they should appear.
Q1: For the opening, choose either A or B:
A: Astronomers used a high-tech new telescope to take a peek at the coldest place in the universe and were surprised when they found it looks like a ghost.
At -458° Fahrenheit, they originally thought it looked like a bow tie before the greater resolution provided by the new telescope showed a ghost-like shape.
B: Astronomers were shocked to find that the coldest place in the universe (the Boomerang Nebula) looks like a ghost when viewed through a high-resolution telescope.
The Boomerang Nebula, which is about 5,000 light years away from Earth and is in its final stages of life as a star, has a temperature of just -458° Fahrenheit.
Now select the order that the following three quotes (all taken from the lead researcher, Duncan Galloway) should appear in the story:
1: “They’re not just cold at this late stage though as they also emit lots of UV radiation, which is what allows us to see them from so far away.”
2: “What remains of a star at this stage of its life cycle is just the very central component of the original star. They aren’t burning now, which is why they are so cold.”
3: “We’ve seen some funny images over the years, but the ghostly spectre of the Boomerang Nebula was a real shock.”
Q2: For the opening, choose either A or B:
A: Students at the University of St. Andrews have designed a new app that helps schedule the time they keep in hand ahead of their assignments.
Project developer Andrew Stephen explained that the idea sprung from an unhappy classmate who complained about having three essays due in the space of four days.
B: Failing to manage time spent on coursework effectively could be a thing of the past after students from the University of St. Andrews developed an app to help time scheduling.
Project developer Andrew Stephen explained that he hopes the invention will prove useful to fellow students all over the world.
Now select the order that the following three quotes (all taken from Andrew Stephen) should appear in the story:
1: “The basic idea is to help students plan ahead more effectively.”
2: “Although we have road-tested the app, it’ll be a few weeks yet before it’s ready.”
3: “Without good planning, deadlines can often creep up on you and you’ll find yourself with too little time to devote to an assignment worth a lot of marks.”
Writing an Interesting, Relevant Article
Read the interview transcript entitled ‘BC Dinosaur Interview’. A pdf copy of this is available for you to download here. As you read it, try to think what makes the research interesting, and how you should write your article about it (after all, there is no point writing a boring article or one with little relevance to the research that was done).
The questions that follow will give you more practice in using interview material to select an effective angle to take with your article, as well as in extracting quotations and paraphrasing material.
Question 3 (5 marks)
Consider the five following angles that could be taken when you write an entire article about this research. Try to rank these from most interesting to least interesting and remember not to misrepresent the interviewee (Victoria Arbour). Hint: Imagine reading an article framed entirely around each one of these revelations. This should help you decide which angles are more newsworthy, novel, and interesting.
A: It took a long time to work out what sort of animal the fossil came from.
B: There was controversy over the finding and the original collector was very angry.
C: This is the first time a pterosaur fossil has been found in BC.
D: This is the first time a dinosaur fossil has been found in Canada.
E: There should be some dinosaur fossils to find in the area nearby.
Question 4 (3 marks)
Imagine that your editor has asked you to produce a very short article explaining (to the general public) how the researchers figured out that the fossil belonged to a pterosaur. Read the fourth response (at the bottom of the first page) given by Victoria Arbour in this transcript when she was asked this question. Try to paraphrase this. Try to remove all jargon and complex, potentially ambiguous words (1 mark). Do not write more than 50 words (1 mark), but make sure you explain the important elements of Victoria’s answer without misrepresenting her original meaning (1 mark). Make sure you include a word count at the end of your answer.
Question 5 (3 marks)
Now read the ninth response (at the bottom of the second page) given by Victoria Arbour in this transcript (when she was asked about what the finding said about the kind of environment, or about what else existed there at the time). Try to paraphrase this. Try to remove all jargon, and complex, potentially ambiguous words (1 mark). Do not write more than 50 words (1 mark), but make sure you explain the important elements of Victoria’s answer without misrepresenting her original meaning (1 mark). Make sure you include a word count at the end of your answer.
Question 6 (1 mark)
Choose one quote to incorporate into the paraphrased information you have just written to answer Question 5 (1 mark). Hint: There is only one quote that is personable and succinct that you could add to make the article more engaging.
Critiquing Other Articles
Now you have had a good amount of practice in writing interesting articles, selecting quotations, and paraphrasing material succinctly, you should be able to critique articles written by other people. The final activities in this post-class set will require you to do this when referring to the summary article (below) of a recent science discovery that was published in a university newspaper. Hint: All three quotes came from the same person, who was a lead researcher involved in the discovery.
Research involving scientists from Trinity College Dublin has discovered a ground-breaking new technique that will make determining cell membrane protein structure up to 20 times more efficient.
Making use of a highly specialized syringe, researchers will be able to place protein crystals into the path of X-rays at precisely the right speeds to produce diffraction patterns from which the 3-D structures can be interpreted.
This discovery will have major implications for drug research because over 50% of the drugs currently on the market target cell membrane proteins. But scientists can only hope to design new drugs that act effectively if they have accurate protein structure ‘roadmaps’ from which to work from.
Quote 1: “The key is in being able to present the protein crystals at exactly the right speeds, which is what the syringe enabled us to do.”
Quote 2: “It’s a tremendously exciting breakthrough. Instead of waiting for six months to decode a specific protein structure, researchers might now only need to wait for 10 days.”
Quote 3: “We showed in our research how quickly we were able to decode a known protein structure, treating the process as though we were working from scratch and had no idea how this particular membrane protein looked structurally. It was important to work this way because if we had determined an unknown protein structure using a new technique, people might have wondered how accurate our findings were because they had no blueprint to confirm it against.”
Question 7 (1 mark)
Which quote should be used as it is in the article?
A: Quote 1
B: Quote 2
C: Quote 3
Question 8 (1 mark)
Which of the three quotes should not be used in any way in the article? Hint: this one should not even be paraphrased.
A: Quote 1
B: Quote 2
C: Quote 3
Question 9 (1 mark)
Which quote is the best choice to paraphrase instead of using as a direct quote?
A: Quote 1
B: Quote 2
C: Quote 3
Question 10 (2 marks)
Explain your answer to Q9. Briefly state why this quote should be paraphrased (1 mark) and then succinctly paraphrase it yourself (1 mark).