Writing Skills

In an annotated bibliography you name and then briefly describe and evaluate the content of each of your sources.

First, write your first source in APA or MLA format. Then directly underneath, write your description and evaluation – your annotation. Follow this with your next source, then annotation, and so on.

Annotations do one or more of the following:

• Briefly describe/summarize the content and focus of a source.
• Briefly restate the main argument (thesis) of your source (The introduction and conclusion are useful for this).
• Identify the research question or hypothesis, then the major methods, and the main conclusions.
• Suggest the source’s relevance to your paper.
• Explain the source’s strengths and weaknesses.
• Discuss your reactions to the source.

Annotated Bibliography

Corso, M. J., Bundick, M. J., Quaglia, R. J., & Haywood, D. E. (2013). Where student, teacher, and content meet: Student engagement in the secondary school classroom. American Secondary Education, 41(3), 50-61.

Dr. Russell Quaglia is renowned in the field of education and the founder of the Institute for Aspirations, he co-wrote this article with leading staff from the Institute. The article defines the precursors of student engagement as functions of the interactions between, teachers, students and the class content. In an ESL context, when exploring the potential of Stephen Krashen’s Theory of Second Language Acquisition, this knowledge is vital as student motivation is required to be borne from within. The authors conclude that a reexamination of classroom engagement is necessary in order to compete in the highly stimulating world in which young learners find themselves.

Larrotta, C. (2007). Inquiry in the adult classroom: An ESL literacy experience. Adult Learning, 18(3-4), 25-29.

In this study, Larrotta, an ESL teacher and assistant professor at Texas State University, conducted a quantitative action research project to test her hypothesis that introducing inquiry spirals into an Adult ESL environment would be an effective strategy to engage learners while maintaining an adequate language acquisition rate. Her finding supported her claim, however, she also found significant scaffolding was necessary to guide students through such autonomous learning situations. However, as her study was conducted through observation of only her own class undergoing this activity, its findings can only suggest where larger more statistically robust studies may find relevance. Having said this, this study does support a growing body of research that is defining the importance of compelling comprehensible information in ESL instruction.