Referencing is the acknowledgement of the sources that we use in our work. Using the right sources in the work provides us with the supporting evidence we need in our assignment. We must reference all sources that we use in your assignment, including words and ideas, facts, images, videos, audio, websites, statistics, diagrams and data.

Good referencing has many advantages as listed here.

• It shows what we have read. Our cited references at the end of the paper or book demonstrate the depth of our reading.
• It enables the reader to locate the sources referred to in the article or paper Researchers rely on referencing to locate sources.
• It supports and strengthens our argument. An academic paper is a carefully constructed argument in the sense that you take a position on an issue and support it with evidence gathered from the sources you have read, to try to convince your readers.
• It also demonstrates academic integrity. Proper referencing ensures that we have acknowledged the sources and that we have done your best to avoid plagiarism – the use of other people's words, ideas or materials without proper acknowledgement. Plagiarism can be intentional (deliberate cheating) or unintentional (happen accidentally). Academic misconduct – any act where the honesty, reliability or integrity of a work has been compromised – can incur serious penalties by the University. Some referencing styles use footnotes (e.g. Oxford), while others require the name of the author(s) and year of publication in the body of the paper (e.g. Harvard and APA). Different units may use different referencing styles, so always it is important to check carefully which style is required for each of our assignments. When reading and taking notes, always it is mandatory to write down the full details of the source (author/s, title, page number and other publication details). This will make the writing and referencing process much easier later on, and also help you to avoid accidentally copying and plagiarizing someone else's work.

16.2. Importance of reference study

There are many reasons why referencing is important. Some of them are listed here. Basically reference study and review of literature is very crucial in any field of education mainly because it helps to: