Author: Julie Watson, eLanguages, University of Southampton
All writers should be aware of the importance of not plagiarising the work of another writer. Warnings about plagiarism are frequently given, particularly in the context of academic study but the problem applies to other formal writing contexts too.
What do you understand plagiarism to be?
Complete the sentence below to produce a simple definition of plagiarism and then check your answer:
Plagiarism is .
In these activities you will consider some different scenarios and consider whether they constitute plagiarism or not. You will also reflect on the causes of plagiarism and why it is considered to be wrong.
Plagiarism may be unintentional or deliberate. You are going to consider some typical scenarios in which the problem of plagiarism arises.
In the following list, indicate whether the behaviour is deliberate cheating (by selecting the tick symbol ) or not (by selecting the cross symbol ):
1.
Two students write an essay together and submit the same piece of work as
their own.
2.
A student copies several short paragraphs from the web, links them together
with his/her own words without stating where they came from.
3.
A student quotes a sentence without quotation marks or reference.
4.
Two students work together on an assignment to discuss the topic and read
each other's writing and submit separate texts.
Some plagiarism is caused by the deliberate attempt by writers to deceive their readers into thinking that they have written what is in fact someone else's work. One serious form of this might be a student buying an essay from an online essay bank and submitting it to their tutor as their own work.
However, there may be other reasons why plagiarism occurs. Can you think of any?
Make notes in the box and then read the comments below.
Educational institutions in particular have to take the issue of plagiarism seriously.
The advice that many tutors give their students is:
"It is better to submit your own work, even if it has a lot
of errors; at least you will get credit for the effort you have made. If you
submit something that was written by someone else without errors, you risk
getting nothing".
Make notes on why you think plagiarism is seen as a problem and then read the comments below.
You may be wondering if it is possible to know when someone is plagiarising.
The short answer is that plagiarism is 'easily' detected in many cases. Tutors can very easily spot where a student has incorporated text into their own essay. In addition to spotting something uneven in the style, other methods are used:
Now test yourself on what you have learned about plagiarism by putting the parts of a summary in the correct order in this exercise:
Produced for the Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics
and Area Studies Materials Bank www.llas.ac.uk/mb
Author: Julie Watson, eLanguages, University of Southampton