J. Roth--English 99/101/201

Incorporating Another Author’s Words and Ideas into Your Essay

This example is derived from James Lincoln Collier’s essay “Anxiety: Challenge by Another Name” on pp. 639-641 of the writing textbook English Skills with Readings. If we assume, however, that we found Collier’s essay on pp. 35-37 of the September 1997 issue, the proper MLA citation for it would be

Collier, James Lincoln. “Anxiety: Challenge by Another Name.” Reader’s Digest Sept. 1997: 35-37.

Note how parts of this citation are used in parentheses to credit Collier for the words and information we have borrowed from him and incorporated into our essay.

OUR ESSAY

¶ thesis James Lincoln Collier in his essay “Anxiety: Challenge by Another Name” shares his experiences with anxiety from his college years through his present life. According to Collier, these experiences have taught him three valuable rules about anxiety and its potential either to do us harm or good. I, too, have witnessed or survived many anxious times and can easily apply Collier’s three rules to my own experience.

¶two Collier’s first rule regarding anxiety is “do what makes you anxious, don’t do what makes you depressed” (Collier 35). He discovered this rule as a result of his turning down a college friend’s invitation to visit a ranch in Argentina during a summer vacation. I discovered this rule in much the same way. When I was a child, my aunt offered to take my brother and me on a trip to . . . . continue paragraph

¶three Teaching his son to swim led Collier to his second rule about anxiety, “You’ll never eliminate anxiety by avoiding things that caused it” (36). According to Collier, his son was very anxious about the water when first learning to swim. However, instead of avoiding what made him anxious, he practiced swimming everyday. In time, his son’s anxiety about water was reduced and eventually extinguished through repetition and practice, through facing his fears. My colleague at work had a similar experience. She entered college wanting to become an insect biologist. Unfortunately, she was terrified of spiders. Instead of avoiding this fear, she applied for a work-study job in the arachnid lab. The first few weeks tending to the spiders in the lab were terrifying. But as time went on, she developed a greater level of comfort with them. Eventually she was able to. continue paragraph

¶four third rule from Collier’s essay plus application

¶conclusion

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MLA Citation:

Collier, James Lincoln. “Anxiety: Challenge by Another Name.” Reader’s Digest Sept.

1997: 35-37