Skills with Sources

Generally in my writing, I do not use any of my sources to supplement and add to my writing. Actually, I have never even considered using sources in most of the ways in which the chapter describes. When I use sources in my compositions, I view it as a chore and an interruption to what I am trying to say. I do not use them to make further explorations about my subject, or to ask new questions and make connections. These are one of the strategies that I will start to use my sources for, in addition to summarizing and truly considering them before I implement them into my writing. I also will begin to make explicit what is implicit within the sources, and plan it out into my writing so that the text of the sources has some true value to it. In addition, I feel that very often in my writing I simply restate exactly what the source has said with quotes around it, and leave that alone as the only supporting evidence for the argument I am making. Instead of simply validating or refuting the sources I gather, I want to try to open up conscious conversation between them within my text, which will help provide a body for my writing, with structure from outside sources, opinions, and research. At the same time, my goal is to keep my own opinion distinguished from that of the sources I am using in my writing. 

One of the other ideas that I personally find most easy to understand is taking one of the ideas in the sources that I find interesting or valid to the point that I am making and then using it and developing it further with my own thoughts and the context of the composition and the source. I believe this to be a very valuable idea, one that could potentially add very valuable elements to my writing and one that I had never considered before reading the chapter.