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

138 SMART THINKING: SKILLS FOR CRITICAL UNDERSTANDING & WRITING

supported in the argument, as there is no evidence about these other areas.

Technically, one might say, it is unproven.

c The phrase 'devoting some weeks and an assignment to that task' might be

thought by some to be a separate claim, embedded in claim 3. Possibly: but

I would see it as detail which expands on and makes sensible the part of

claim 3 that says 'directly addresses'—the detail shows how it is direct.

By way of example, here is the basic analytical structure that might be seen to

lie beneath this narrative flow:

2. The Department of Media and Information takes a different approach to some
   other parts ofCurtin University in solving the problem of ensuring that students
   in first-year university units each semester learn, quickly, the methods and skills
   of correct referencing.


3. In some courses, students are very much left to fend for themselves, relying on,
   perhaps, the services of the university library, advice offered by individual staff
   members, or simply muddling through on the basis of critical feedback on their
   first assignments.


4. The Department of Media and Information uses its first-year unit MCI 101:
   Research and Presentation Project to address directly the need that students have
   to learn the methods and skills of correct referencing by devoting some weeks in
   class and an assignment to that goal.


5. Students in the Department of Media and Information also practise the methods
   and skills of correct referencing learned in MCI 101: Research and Presentation
   Project in the assignments required in other first-year units that they are
   studying at the same time.

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Moving on to the second paragraph:

[Nevertheless, even when direct attention of the kindd just outlined has

been paid to referencing, some students continue to struggle with it.]5 [The

problem is not merely a technical one]6, sincee [all the students at

university are capable of learning to follow the kinds of technical directions

that lay out the appropriate steps needed to reference their work.]7 What

then is the cause of this problem?' DM I would suggest that [many students

(including some who are quite able referencers) remain confused about the

admittedly complex set of reasons that explain why referencing is so