Activity 1: Identify your use of reporting verbs in your paper, and write them down or underline them. Answer the following questions:
- Are the reporting verbs used appropriate for a formal response? Remember that words like say and talk about are more common in speech than in writing.
- Do you use a variety of reporting verbs rather than relying one just a small number?
- What patterns do you use to integrate reporting verbs into your sentence? Do you use a variety of patterns? Do you cite the author when needed? Does the citation take the APA form of Author (date) or (Author, date)?
- What verb tenses do you use? Are the verb tenses correctly formed (check for subject/verb agreement and past tense markers)?
Evaluative language in responses:
Activity 2: Identify evaluative language in your response. Answer the following questions:
- Is the evaluative language appropriate? Does it have a positive, negative, or neutral evaluation? Does the evaluative language use the correct form for the part of speech (e.g., noun, adjective, adverb)?
- Have you used any of the unreal conditionals?
Additional practice with reporting verbs:
Activity 3. The bolded words are what are known as reporting verbs.
Thomas (1997) states that the consecutive overtime scheduled would worsening the working situation and be less productively.
Research on social psychology shows that anticipated emotions are diverse (Steel, 2009).
Thompson (2014) and Rich (2015) maintain that hit songs become popular quickly but are with short longevity.
Note how the writer of the sentences above uses different forms to refer to outside sources. There are two different patterns. Can you identify them?
1.
2.
A third pattern usually does not include the reporting verb but adds the phrase “According to Author (date),” before a complete sentence.
According to Gillen and Lefkowitz (2011), there were no clear differences in the weight gain patterns across different racial groups.
These examples use APA documentation style, which is the citation style we will use for this course. What are the two elements included in an in-text citation for APA style?
1.
2.
The primary function of reporting verbs in academic summaries is to report (see R below; Kwon, Staples, & Partridge, 2018). However, reporting verbs can be used for other functions, including to refer to one’s own actions and to generalize. These functions are useful in certain contexts (e.g., to state the purpose of an essay), but again are not as common as the reporting function. In general, if you decide not to use the reporting function, you should think about your rhetorical purpose for doing so.
Functions of Reporting Verbs
| Reporting verbs | Student RV Examples |
| Report: (R): introduces information from an outside source (suggests feeling/stance towards information). | Research on social psychology shows that anticipated emotions are diverse (Steel, 2009).Fast-Food Outlets on Wall Street Journal says that some of these fast-food chain are unhealthy. A study of Feral Cat Population Problem recently, found that the population of feral cat in Chicago fell. |
| Self-reference (S): present actions, feelings (complete or intended to be completed) by the author. | I’ll use this to support my argumentative essay to show the negative effects for young athletes.I smelt my home. I can say that, it is that bowl of noodles. It makes me hungry.After reading these three articles, I found that the results of them is similar in some aspects. |
| Generalize (G): used to provide feelings or assumptions often without supporting evidence. | All males have the right to show themselves as male by dressing their own way.One could say the first violinist sets the tone for the rest of the orchestra.It is not hard to find that college students who are not very friendly with international students. |
Reporting verbs also fall into different semantic categories. Although these words are not synonyms, so they should be chosen with care, they do have related meanings. The chart below shows commonly used reporting verbs.
Semantic Categories of Reporting Verbs
| Argue Introduces information; suggests feeling (stance) towards the information. | argue, suggest, assert, note, predict, write, explain, conclude, mention, admit, observe, accept, claim, imply, complain, say, add, hypothesize, insist, maintain, propose, remark, reply, speculate, stress, contend, state, report, postulate, acknowledge, posit, talk about (31 types) |
| Show Display or allow to be perceived, (often through research or action). | show, illustrate, indicate, demonstrate, confirm, mean, reveal (7 types) |
| Find Presents discovery; often used to refer to writers’ own actions. | find, realize, observe, discover, establish, infer, recognize, identify, note (9 types) |
| Think Provides feelings & assumptions; often used without evidence. | think, hold, assume, feel, hope, know (5 types) |