Ability to Use Source Materials
Sources are evidence, not decoration
Source questions test whether you can choose, quote, and connect material without distorting it.
Choosing: judge a source by authority (credentials, publisher, peer review), currency (does the field date quickly?), relevance (does it address your actual question?), and bias (who funded it, what is omitted?). Primary sources supply firsthand evidence; secondary sources interpret it.
Integrating: never drop a quotation into a paragraph unannounced. Introduce it with a signal phrase naming the author, quote exactly, then interpret it in your own words - introduce, quote, explain. Quote only wording that is distinctive or contestable; paraphrase the rest, and cite the paraphrase too.
Accuracy: brackets mark your changes, ellipses mark omissions, and neither may alter the author's meaning. Trimming a 'not' or a qualifier such as 'in some cases' turns fair use of a source into misrepresentation.
Synthesis: organize by claim, not by source; show where sources agree, disagree, or answer different parts of the question. Unattributed paraphrase - including swapping a few synonyms into someone else's sentence - is plagiarism.
Traps: a citation that does not actually support the sentence it is attached to; treating one anecdote as representative data; letting a single source dominate; and quotations that are accurate word for word yet misleading because the surrounding qualification was cut.
Rule of thumb: if you cannot state in one sentence what a source contributes to your argument, you are not ready to cite it.
Worked example: 'As Okonkwo notes, funding "fell sharply" - a finding that undercuts her own later claim of steady growth.'