Quotation practices in independent study & dissertation report writing

The concern of avoiding plagiarism and reducing similarity score in Turnitin report leads students to make lots of quotations, sometimes of quite large size, in the Independent Study and Dissertation reports. However, there could be problems with the students' quotation practices:

1. Quotation without referencing. For example: "............. (Ho, 2018)"  [In this case, the referencing is within the quotation marks; there is still no referencing]. It should be, for example:  "............. (Ho, 2018)" (Wong, 2018).

2. Lots of quotations in the reports spoil the quality of the report. There are cases where the actual writing of the student in the report is less than 15% of the whole report. Sometimes, the actual writing of the student in the literature review section is less than 15%.

A link on further information on quotation practice.

Lastly, over-reliance on quotations might have something to do with time management, writing skill and literature review problems. They are not to be discussed here.