Thursday, October 1, 2009

Stephen Krashen Likes to Cite Himself

Stephen Krashen likes to cite himself. That sounds vaguely distasteful, really, but I suppose one day I'll probably be citing myself too.

It doesn't help that he seems to be the most prolific writer in his field, and that pretty much everyone else who has written on his topics has written with him as a co-author.

Still, it starts to get a bit ridiculous when you're reading an article Krashen co-authored in 2004, and it keeps citing the articles he wrote in 1989, 1991, 1997 and 2002...

It gets even more ridiculous when you're reading an article that wasn't exactly written by him, but they still cite all of his previous articles – and then you realise they co-authored a couple of those articles with him...

Seriously, can someone else please write about Extensive and Narrow Reading in Second Language studies? And, I know this might be hard, but could you try to avoid citing more than one article by Krashen? The universe needs the balance.

1 comment:

Library girl said...

This is something I always wondered about at Uni. I found myself, time and again, citing the same bunch of people over and over ... and it wasn't from lack of research! Oh no! Once I found out how to use the Uni's virtual library and access that bottomless pit of academic databases, I had journal articles up the wazoo! But still ... same people, different articles. It makes you wonder about the relative scope of academic writing in specialised fields ... but then I guess that's why they're specialised.

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