Smart Thinking: Skills for Critical Understanding and Writing, 2nd Ed

144 SMART THINKING: SKILLS FOR CRITICAL UNDERSTANDING & WRITING

Note how the reference to Smart Thinking serves to support the claim y, thereby
modelling the use of referencing which is the subject of the reason explained in the
paragraph.
The next paragraph is not reasoning. It summarises the three previous para-
graphs and their connection to the main theme.

These three reasons can be summed up as follows. Each newly

produced essay, article, presentation, or whatever, is always based

substantially in existing published or presented material and becomes

a part of the 'ongoing, knowledgeable conversation' expressed through

that material. Written work needs good referencing so as to refer its

readers elsewhere, to repay the debt to other writers, and to reinforce

its own arguments.

However, the next paragraph is an argument:

But what makes it hard for some students to grasp the essential elements

of this relatively simple argument as to why they must reference, even as

they dutifully follow out the instructions to 'reference correctly' laid out for

them by teachers?k Without going into detail, it seems likely that [many

students do not yet believe themselves to be authors, with an audience,

and a comradeship with other authors. They see themselves primarily as

students, governed by a debilitating and unequal regime of inequality in

relation to their teachers.125 Thus, [the reasons I have just outlined are

not rejected by some students because^1 they are not understood, or are

unreasonably or wilfully ignored. Rather the reasons are rejected because

they are, quite rationally, not relevant to a 'student', even if they are

explained to students.]26 [A 'student' (by which I mean the abstract

identity rather than any particular individual) is governed by the impera-

tives of 'doing as one is told' by teachers;]27 [a student's audience is their

assessor;]28 [a student's sense of comradeship is with other students as

students;]29 [the goal of writing is not, usually, 'contributing to human

knowledge' but getting a good mark.]30

27 + 28 + 29 + 30

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