Browsing by Author "Aggoune, Soumia"

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    Investigating Students’ Use of References in their Master Dissertations: The Case of the Department of English at MMUTO
    (University Mouloud Mammeri of Tizi-Ouzou, 2017-09) Aggoune, Soumia; Amroun, Isma
    students of English use references. It also attempts to unveil the referencing systems adopted, and check whether the students are consistent in applying them. To achieve these goals, four distinctive theoretical frameworks are employed which consist in the Harvard, the APA, the MLA, and the Chicago author-date referencing systems. The nature of this study is descriptive. It is conducted in the department of English at Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou. The corpus of this research is composed of forty bibliographies of Dissertations from different specialties. These dissertations were submitted from 2014 to 2016, apart from one dissertation that was discussed in 2007. The data consist of a total of 1662 references. The results of this investigation are reported and described using the mixed method. They show that the students use more print source materials than electronic sources, and rather omit to update their sources. The findings also reveal that various referencing systems are interchangeably used by students. The most used styles are the MLA style in Literature-Civilization specialties, and the APA and Harvard styles are mostly used in Linguistics-ESP specialties. It ought to be mentioned that the least used style is the Chicago author-date system. Furthermore, the students are more or less consistent in applying the chosen styles. For instance, they often mix between the Harvard and the APA, or between the Chicago and the MLA styles. The conclusion to be drawn from the different findings is that the students have only partly respected the recommendations of the chosen referencing systems.