You are learning the ethics of scholarly voice: you will read the scene it happens in, learn 10 words and phrases, take apart the pattern behind them (reporting verbs, direct/indirect citation & scholarly attribution), hear them in a conversation, rehearse them, and finish by saying one thing out loud to be graded.
New York Public Library, Main Branch, Fifth Avenue, then dinner at The Smith, Midtown
The Rose Main Reading Room at the New York Public Library is fifty-two feet high and nearly the length of a football field. It was built to make you feel small in the presence of knowledge. I sat there on a Tuesday morning with a stack of journal articles, trying to write a literature review that synthesized fourteen sources without losing my own voice.
The challenge of citation at C2 level is not mechanical — it is rhetorical. Every time you cite, you make a choice. 'Butler (1990) argues' positions you as a neutral conduit. 'As Butler (1990) has demonstrated' signals your allegiance. 'Butler (1990) claims' — and you have already begun your counterargument. The reporting verb is your epistemic stance compressed into a single word.
My advisor had told me: 'Your voice should be the loudest in the room, but it should be in conversation with every other voice.' She meant that scholarly writing is not monologue but intertextual dialogue. You synthesize, you engage, you position — and in doing so, you reveal your intellectual lineage without ever saying 'I believe.'
I finished the review at four o'clock and walked to The Smith on 51st Street. Over roast chicken, I reread my draft. In twelve pages, I had used 'argues' eleven times, 'demonstrates' four times, 'claims' twice, and 'asserts' once. Each verb was a deliberate signal. Citation, done properly, is argumentation in disguise.