The skill that I really want to teach to incoming freshman is how to use the structure of “quotation sandwich” to integrate citation into a paper and let it better serve the thesis.

In order to let students fully understand the usefulness of this structure and remember to use it whenever they have a citation, I will design a small game. At first, I will show my students a piece of meat, such as toasted beef. I will ask them to think about what this meat is, where it might come from and why it shows up in the classroom. I hope that they might have many wrong answers because only after they make mistakes can this game and the structure that I want to tell them leave a great and indelible impression. When all the students have their guesses, I will tell them that actually this is just a piece of meat I take out from a sandwich. And then I will put the meat back into the two pieces of bread with lettuce. Within a second, the existence of this piece of meat makes more sense. In the end, I will tell my students that if one puts a citation in his paper without any introduction or summary, this citation will be just like this piece of meat; readers will be confused about why the writer puts such a citation here. However, if one introduces the author, and source of the citation and then give a short summary after the citation with a beginning like “in other words…”, “what this means is that…” or “this author is trying to convey that…”, the whole citation will make the paper more consistent and convincing.

During my study of Eng181, I am very impressed of the use of “quotation sandwich” which I believe lightens my logic in my paper. So I wish that other students can also understand the great advantages a successful “quotation sandwich” can give to the paper.