Abstract :
Citing other people’s work is a convention in academic writing and it reflects the writer as someone who is aware of the trends or discussions going on in his/her field. It is through that awareness that writers are able to make a meaningful contribution to the existing body of knowledge. This paper examines the types, forms and functions of citations in the writing of National University of Lesotho undergraduate students. The data were collected from the discussion sections of the final year undergraduate students’ research projects in six faculties at the university. Frequency counts indicated that students used a total of 374 citations. These consisted of both integral and non-integral citations. As regards to the forms, it was observed that the students used four citation forms- parentheses, source plus reporting verb phrase, footnotes and according to X structure. As regards the functions, it was observed that the students used citations mainly for attribution. That is, reporting what the cited authors said or did. They also used citations for other functions, such as comparison with other studies or establishing links between sources. The study concludes that using citations for these other purposes was an indication that students had advanced their reading and interpretive skills as they were able to establish differences or similarities between the different studies.
