Innovation in Language Learning

This contribution presents a series of lessons to teach referencing skills to undergraduate aeronautical engineering students. The accurate use and documentation of source material and literature forms an essential element of academic integrity and publication ethics. This is even truer today when students may feel tempted to employ generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools for writing assignments. With diverse student bodies in global education, it is necessary to establish a common understanding of referencing standards and academic rigour in writing, which is the motivation for this pedagogical intervention. The teaching sequence begins with a focus on writing figure captions, introducing the need for referencing all materials that students have not created themselves. In a second session, in-text referencing is discussed in detail, and learners are given a style sheet for producing a list of references. Based on the corresponding bibliographical information, students are then asked to complete this list for homework. Furthermore, they are required to produce a graded written assignment to demonstrate that they have grasped the concept of professional academic referencing. They receive feedback on their corrected assignments in class to clarify open questions and address any misconceptions about academic writing. This writing task is repeated in the subsequent semester to consolidate learners’ referencing skills. The lesson series presented here is well suited to be transferred to higher education writing classes in similar contexts.