1. PLAGIARISM
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http://grandstreetlibraryela.wikispaces.com/Plagiarism
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Presentation by Mark Feder, August 2008, revised April, 2013

2. PLAGIARISM
What is plagiarism? Wikipedia defines it as:
“the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and
the representation of them as one's own original work” *
Wikipedia then goes on to say:
“In the academic world, plagiarism by students is a very serious offense that can
result in punishments such as a failing grade on the particular assignment
(typically at the high school level) or for the course (typically at the college or
university level). For cases of repeated plagiarism, or for cases in which a student
commits severe plagiarism (e.g., submitting a copied article as his or her own
work), a student may be suspended or expelled.”*
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism
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3. PLAGIARISM
Some of the forms that plagiarism can take are described in www.plagiarism.org/
All of the following are considered plagiarism:
•turning in someone else's work as your own
•copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit
•failing to put a quotation in quotation marks
•giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation
•changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit
•copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work,
whether you give credit or not (see our section on "fair use" rules)*
*http://www.plagiarism.org/learning_center/what_is_plagiarism.html
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4. PLAGIARISM
All of us who have taught writing have encountered plagiarism issues and made efforts both
to detect and eliminate plagiarism in student writing. Plagiarism is discussed at staff
meetings and addressed in Classroom Contributions.
A Google search for plagiarism turns up 9,260,000 entries and the Internet is full
of sites that attempt to help teachers detect and prevent student plagiarism. Here
are a few:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/01/
http://www.plagiarized.com/
http://www.doccop.com/
http://www.plagiarism.com/self.detect.htm
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5. PLAGIARISM
Cases of plagiarism in academia as well as the real world make the front pages of
newspapers as these headlines show:
Two Students Kicked off Semester at Sea for Plagiarism
Herald sports columnist John Sleeper resigns over plagiarism
McCain faces accusations of Wikipedia plagiarism
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6. PLAGIARISM
Virtually every university has a statement or policy on plagiarism, attesting to the prevalence
of the problem.
Illinois State University
Harvard University
University of Pennsylvania
University of Oxford
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7. PLAGIARISM
www.co.henry.ga.us/Sheriff/SheriffFieldOps.htm
Concern about plagiarism
sometimes turns teachers into
cops, preoccupied with detecting
plagiarism and punishing the
perpetrators.
…and if you think about it, this is a
fundamental perversion of the role of
the teacher that undermines his or her
ability to foster and facilitate learning.
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8. PLAGIARISM
At INTERLINK, our affectively oriented student-
centered approach makes it especially important
for the teacher to be “on the side” of the student
and not to be perceived as someone whose goal
is to “catch” the student in wrongdoing.
So, how can we preserve the nurturing role of the
teacher and yet prevent students from
plagiarizing?
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9. PLAGIARISM
A good starting point is to consider why students plagiarize. One answer,
of course, is that human beings are inherently dishonest and without
oversight will try to get away with whatever they can.
Without embarking on a
philosophical exploration of whether
people are good or evil by nature,
such an answer, of course, suggests
that students come to our program
www.dayofgod.net not to actually improve their English
skills but only to trick us into
believing that they have, and runs
counter to the humanistic thesis that
J humans have a natural propensity
J
and desire to learn. impressions-in-time.blogspot.com
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10. PLAGIARISM
The most sensible approach
to combating plagiarism is
to first try to understand its
possible causes and then
www.thefreedictionary.com
eliminate them. In this
respect, it is not different
from effectively combating
other social problems such
as drug abuse or teen candygourlay.com
pregnancy.
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11. PLAGIARISM
The attempt to eliminate a behavioral problem like plagiarism by criminalizing
it and focusing on apprehending and punishing wrongdoers is almost certainly
doomed to failure because attention and resources are squandered on
secondary matters instead of on the problem itself. Inevitably, measures taken
to apprehend culprits will result in more sophisticated counter-measures to
avoid apprehension and an escalating war between student and teacher.
And the student’s efforts become
centered on avoiding detection
rather than on learning.
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12. PLAGIARISM
Let’s consider what factors might cause a student to plagiarize.
1. A student may not even recognize that s/he is doing
anything wrong or that s/he in fact plagiarizing
2. A student may not know how to accomplish the task
at hand or may feel inadequate to do so and resort to
plagiarism
3. A student may feel pressured about time and uses
plagiarism as a shortcut
4. A student may not care about learning or
accomplishing anything and just wants an easy way out
www.timeseye.net
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13. PLAGIARISM
Teachers and university statements usually address the first factor by defining
plagiarism and giving advice about how to avoid it.
But is it enough to clarify
what plagiarism is and
then warn students to
avoid it?
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http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/plagiarism.html
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14. PLAGIARISM
Why do so many students rely on the writing of others in the first place? Maybe the
prevalence of plagiarism has something to do with the way we teach writing or the
requirements we impose on student writing. For example, how often do writing classes and
textbooks start out by providing a model and telling students to follow that model?
Use this as a
model to write
your own
essay
When we tell students
“Your writing should look
P like this,” are we not
P pushing them towards
P plagiarism?
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15. PLAGIARISM
Telling students to follow a model puts pressure on them to produce something that the teacher will
consider acceptable even if the student does not clearly understand what makes it acceptable.
Imitation rather than creation is encouraged and process is subordinated to product. Imposing topics
that students have little knowledge about or interest in only increases the chances that they will look to
external sources for help. Students with limited English proficiency cannot easily separate what is said
from how it is said and will inevitably borrow phrases to express what they do not realize can be
expressed in other ways. And if we are not careful about the kind of feedback we give to students,
we might be sending them the message that their
own language is inadequate and only language
“borrowed” from other sources will meet the test.
Feedback that targets errors and ignores the
positive reduces students’ confidence in
their ability to express things in their own
Pwords and makes them more likely to seek
P words of others.
the
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16. PLAGIARISM
Time constraints also add to the pressure to plagiarize. When students feel
overwhelmed by the tasks facing them, they will look for ways of getting their
assignments out of the way. Once again, delivering a product becomes more
important than the process of writing and students may be tempted to resort to
plagiarism to just “get the work done.”
When students are excited about what they are
creating and take pride in their work, they are
more likely to be engaged in the process and
less likely to think of a writing assignment as
something to get out of the way.
blog.wolfram.com
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17. PLAGIARISM
One of the most powerful things a teacher can do to
www.doritosher.com
prevent plagiarism is to foster students’ confidence in their
own writing ability. The best way to do this is to draw out
what is in the student rather than impose things from the
outside. By starting with a student’s self-expression and
then helping the student improve it, the focus is kept on
process and the unique expression of the individual.
That may seem obvious, but in fact, it is not the typical pattern of writing instruction. Often a
topic is imposed from the outside – a topic that the student may not care about at all and
have nothing to say about. Then the student is told how to address the topic, to use a
particular mode such as descriptive, expository or narrative, to use a framework such as
P chronological or comparative, to use a specified number of paragraphs, to use topic
P sentences, to provide certain kinds of support, etc. Such writing does not come from within
P the student but is imposed from without. It stifles self-expression and impresses on the
p student what a piece of writing should look like, elevating product over process.
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18. PLAGIARISM
Objections may be flying that students have to be able to write in a certain style
and way for college classes and that is true. But we prepare students to do that
first and foremost by getting them to be the best possible writers that they can
be, by working from the inside out and not the other way around.
There is another potential objection that should be
addressed here as well – that students must learn
how to use outside sources properly and how to cite
those sources. That is obviously true. Students must
learn these important academic skills. But these
skills must not be confused with writing itself.
http://www.faceandprofile.com/tag/objection
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19. PLAGIARISM
If we consider how the instruction of writing is
typically approached in textbooks and in the
classroom, we can see that we teachers are, to a
large extent, responsible for the plague of
plagiarism.
To combat plagiarism, our focus should be on
how students approach the process of writing
rather than on perfecting ways of detecting
and punishing cheating. http://www.igopogo.com/
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20. PLAGIARISM
Tips for helping students use their own words and not those of others:
 Emphasize process rather than product
 Encourage students to tell their own stories and express their own ideas
 Help students develop their own unique writing style
 Let students practice summarizing events and information in their own words
 Provide feedback that helps students develop pride in their own writing
 Create strategies for getting students engaged and invested in their writing
 Use in-class time for writing projects
 Don’t overwhelm students with assignments
 Look for ways to tell students what they can do instead of what not to do
 Allow as much freedom and autonomy as possible for students to take
P ownership of their writing
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21. PLAGIARISM
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