Effects of Plagiarism Plagiarism, one of the main scourges of academic life, is quite an easy concept, but, nonetheless, essay about plagiarism, harmful. Never, ever take notes verbatim — put them in your own words as you go see above. certified writers online. Common causes You might think that you would never plagiarize. Moral issue with plagiarism is that students turn in assignments they got off essay about plagiarism their friends, online or even a book.
Plagiarism Analysis
Plagiarism is a serious offense. At the university level it will usually get you an F on your assignment, essay about plagiarism. If you plagiarize repeatedly you may even get kicked out of the institution. Outside the academy, the penalties vary. Being caught plagiarizing certainly hurts your reputation and you might lose your job. If you value original thought, personal integrity, and scholarly research, essay about plagiarism, then you will naturally want to avoid plagiarism. You might think that you would never plagiarize. However, many plagiarism cases are the result of negligence, ignorance, or a lack of self-confidence. Here are some reasons why even good students sometimes plagiarize:, essay about plagiarism. Yet even when plagiarism is inadvertent and unintended, ignorance is no excuse.
You need to cite your sources and present your own argument. This is especially the case when you are paraphrasing the ideas of others. Motecuhzoma may have been elected tlatoani [Aztec ruler], but his coronation awaited the successful conduct of a war. He decided to wage his coronation war against the cities of Nopallan and Icpatepec. One day into the march, Motecuhzoma ordered the Cihuacoatl [senior advisor] to return to Tenochtitlan and execute all the tutors of his children and all the court ladies attendant upon his wives and concubines. In these acts, he set the tone for his reign. He instilled fear with sudden and inexplicable executions, tested the loyalty of his ministers, and constantly checked to see if orders had been executed promptly.
Of course, essay about plagiarism, you are allowed to repeat key words reignfearCihuacoatletc. There is a limit to what needs to be cited. You do not need to provide a source for information that is widely known. It can of course be difficult to know whether a fact is well known, especially if you are not familiar with the subject matter. One way to check is to consider whether multiple sources share the same information without providing any citation. On the other hand, many apparent facts can be contested. Few sources, essay about plagiarism, for instance, essay about plagiarism, agree about the number of casualties in World War I or about the approximate age of the earth.
You should be able to come up with a plot summary yourself. So how can I avoid plagiarizing? This is a valid objection. Students may feel they have no original ideas and are just regurgitating material from various sources. Fortunately, originality is largely defined by how you interact with the information, not by how much you knew at the start. Even if you go into a project with very little knowledge, as soon as you start reading various books and articles you will begin to form an opinion, essay about plagiarism. Evaluate your sources, essay about plagiarism, crosscheck supposed facts, and synthesize various ideas.
In this way you will gradually form your own argument and avoid plagiarism. Instructors may find it difficult to know how to deal with student excuses, so here is some advice for them. Any experienced instructor has heard all the excuses. Here are just a few examples of what students might say:. I essay about plagiarism my brother for some help with editing and he added the plagiarized passages, essay about plagiarism. He is not a university student, you know. I was tired. I guess I made a mistake, but I hope you will understand. In my culture plagiarism is acceptable. How can instructors tell if an excuse has merit? At the beginning of the course, the instructor should have spelled out clearly what constitutes plagiarism is, and what the penalties are.
That way the student cannot claim ignorance, and both parties have a clear reference point, essay about plagiarism. Too often instructors are much essay about plagiarism draconian than the rules themselves. It would be better to assign a smaller penalty e. The instructor thus has the duty to know the rules and to apply them generously in favour of the student. Doing so will make most grade appeals unnecessary. In fact, instructors have to be absolutely sure that a passage is essay about plagiarism before they can act. Noting that a few ideas are broadly similar will not be enough in the case of an appeal. The onus is therefore on the instructor to provide adequate proof of plagiarism highlighted phrases, URLs of the original web pages, etc.
But above all the instructor has a responsibility to design assignments that are difficult to plagiarize. If a student can google the topic and immediately find an entire essay on the same question, essay about plagiarism the instructor is essay about plagiarism to blame. An easy solution is to assign comparative topics then at least the student would have to plagiarize from multiple sources and somehow piece them together. However, there are often better approaches. Try to assign topics for which there may be academic sources, but relatively few popular web pages. Ask the students to approach the subject from an unusual angle.
Be specific about which secondary sources the students must interact with. Instructors who are proactive will have fewer plagiarism cases and fewer appeals, essay about plagiarism. Why is plagiarism rampant across university campuses? Some of it has to do essay about plagiarism the way in which we access information. Just google it! The same behaviour affects how we research. In high school, students are often not taught adequate research skills, and so they look everything up online. Instead of thinking for themselves, students begin most assignments by seeing what other essay about plagiarism have to say. As a society we have a duty to encourage students to believe in themselves, essay about plagiarism trust that they can be great independent thinkers.
Username or Email Address. Remember Me. Essay Writing. Doing Research. The Writing Process, essay about plagiarism. The Essay Format. The Parts of an Essay. Using Quotations. Grading and Feedback. Previous Topic. Next Topic. Plagiarism Essay Writing Doing Research Plagiarism. Common causes You might think that you would never plagiarize. Montezuma: Warlord of the Aztecs. Potomac, This paraphrase is too close to the original, and you should just use a quotation instead. Citing Common Facts There is a limit to what needs to be cited.
Here are some examples of the kinds of things that do not need citation: famous dates e. Advice to Instructors Instructors may find it difficult to know how to deal with student excuses, so here is some advice for them. A Culture of Plagiarism Why is plagiarism rampant across university campuses? Back to Lesson. Accessing this subject requires a login. Please enter your credentials below! Username or Email Address Password Remember Me Lost Your Password? Username Email Registration confirmation will be emailed to you.
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Even though Google searches are little help here, lifted arguments are easy to recognize for any reader who is reasonably familiar with the papers you are citing which, for your professor, is often the case. Like stealing words, stealing ideas is wrong on principle, but it also has practical implications. Lack of proper citation can engender all sorts of confusion — a critical reader will be attempting to evaluate your paper, but will be unable to do so because they are not sure which information came from where. This gets particularly hairy when the idea being posed is something very broad.
Did I read some statistics somewhere about the prevalence of anxiety in college students? Did I read a theory about what causes anxiety, which suggested to me that college might be anxiety-inducing? Did I see a news segment about anxiety? Without a citation, nobody knows. The student may choose not to cite, in that case, because in the absence of a citation, the reader will assume that the argument is original. If the student feels unable to generate an original argument, simply omitting a citation might be very tempting. Others might commit this type of plagiarism more innocently.
A reader will typically assume that all ideas in a paper are yours unless they are instructed otherwise, so a vague citation is not sufficient. How do I avoid it? The reality is quite the opposite. College-level writing is about taking what others have written and interacting with them in some way — exploring a complex idea, comparing and contrasting two different ideas, or pointing out areas of inquiry that are interesting but not well-studied. In order to do any of these things, students must draw on previous work. Here are some basic guidelines: Even in your own words, if an idea is not yours, you must cite it. Furthermore, you must cite it in a way that makes it clear that you are recounting an argument rather than making your own. You have, in effect, made it look like YOU looked at the literature and came up with those reasons.
Even if you cite Parks et al. Not true, in this case. Plan out your argument in broad strokes, then fill in the facts later. Some Parting Thoughts The best advice I can give you to avoid plagiarism is to not put off writing assignments until the last minute. If this happens to you, get an extension. Take the grade penalty for turning it in late. Do ANYTHING but plagiarize. you would get by taking any of these alternatives. As a side note: Professors care passionately about helping you to learn and grow. There is nothing more demoralizing to a professor than discovering that she has been spending her time commenting on sentences or paragraphs that are stolen from a web page or an article.
Furthermore, you benefit in no way from receiving critiques of stolen prose and argumentation. You rob yourself of the opportunity to improve. Everyone loses. Please input your first name. Please input a valid phone number. The format of the e-mail address is incorrect. Contact me. Leave your email and get an eBook. Get an eBook. Submit a request and your personal manager will contact you within 10 minutes! Please enter a valid phone number. Please enter a valid email address. Please enter a valid email address or phone number. Thank you for your interest in our services!
We will contact you within 10 minutes. I was tired. I guess I made a mistake, but I hope you will understand. In my culture plagiarism is acceptable. How can instructors tell if an excuse has merit? At the beginning of the course, the instructor should have spelled out clearly what constitutes plagiarism is, and what the penalties are. That way the student cannot claim ignorance, and both parties have a clear reference point. Too often instructors are much more draconian than the rules themselves. It would be better to assign a smaller penalty e.
The instructor thus has the duty to know the rules and to apply them generously in favour of the student. Doing so will make most grade appeals unnecessary. In fact, instructors have to be absolutely sure that a passage is plagiarized before they can act. Noting that a few ideas are broadly similar will not be enough in the case of an appeal. The onus is therefore on the instructor to provide adequate proof of plagiarism highlighted phrases, URLs of the original web pages, etc. But above all the instructor has a responsibility to design assignments that are difficult to plagiarize.
If a student can google the topic and immediately find an entire essay on the same question, then the instructor is partly to blame. An easy solution is to assign comparative topics then at least the student would have to plagiarize from multiple sources and somehow piece them together. However, there are often better approaches. Try to assign topics for which there may be academic sources, but relatively few popular web pages. Ask the students to approach the subject from an unusual angle. Be specific about which secondary sources the students must interact with. Instructors who are proactive will have fewer plagiarism cases and fewer appeals. Why is plagiarism rampant across university campuses? Some of it has to do with the way in which we access information. Just google it!
The same behaviour affects how we research. In high school, students are often not taught adequate research skills, and so they look everything up online. Instead of thinking for themselves, students begin most assignments by seeing what other people have to say. As a society we have a duty to encourage students to believe in themselves, to trust that they can be great independent thinkers. Username or Email Address. Remember Me.
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