By Chong Bretillon
If I had to describe the experience of discovering that a student has plagiarized part or all of their writing in one word, it would be “disappointing.” As instructors, we are passionate about our academic disciplines and enthusiastic to read our students’ work. As such, I view writing assignments as opportunities to share ideas about a topic and to learn about how my students think; thus, when I come across text in a student’s paper that has been lifted from a source, I feel disappointed that my student didn’t take the time to share his/her thoughts and viewpoints with me—but rather, took the “easy way out.”
College students are expected to know that the written work they produce must be theirs alone. According to the Baruch policy on academic integrity, “Violation of the values and ideals of academic integrity interferes with the fundamental mission of educational institutions” (“Student Guide to Academic Integrity”). Plagiarism thus carries with it serious consequences, ranging from the failing of a class to expulsion. It’s a safe assumption that most students understand that purchasing a paper online or submitting another student’s work as their own are considered breaches of academic integrity. But when it comes to working with sources, the lines are often less clear.
As instructors, we encourage students to view research as a conversation among intellectuals: they amass information from other sources, analyze it, and then draw conclusions and interpretations from their data, on which they then base their arguments in their academic papers. Students’ voices are an important contribution to knowledge about a subject or idea. At many steps along the way, students might find themselves unsure of how to work with variegated information. What if an author’s viewpoint from a secondary source aligns with their own? What if—and this has happened to me numerous times—they come up with an original idea—an original interpretation of a text—only to find that someone else thought of it first? Lastly, how can students pay tribute to the thinkers and critics they’ve read and who have influenced their ideas, while distinguishing their ideas from those of their sources?
It does no one any good to warn students against plagiarism without providing them with clear tools and tutorials that demonstrate how to avoid it. First, they must be shown why they need to cite sources, and then, they must be given clear guidelines on “what to do and what not to do.” Our website contains several fantastic tools and tutorials on avoiding plagiarism:
The trusty Purdue Owl website is a great place to start for information on working with sources. This page summarizes the functions of, and differences between, summarizing, quoting, and paraphrasing.
Sometimes taking a quiz is a fun way to learn. The Cornell University Plagiarism Tutorial demonstrates how to document sources by pairing text passages and image sources with student writing samples. After the passage, a student writing sample appears, and the user must choose whether the student correctly used sources. Users learn what an improperly cited text might look like; it shows how subtle plagiarism can seem.
On Paraphrasing. Sometimes students need to see what paraphrasing and summarizing look like in order to know how to do it. This webpage from our own iMagazine provides clear examples of each. Similarly, The U of Toronto’s website provides clear, step-by-step instructions on how to handle summarizing and paraphrasing. These articles make it clear that students cannot lift entire sentences from a text—and rather than simply reiterate the original author’s points, writers must add some analysis.
Quoting Directly from a source. One of the hallmarks of good academic writing is the judicious use of quotes. Sometimes, however, students can “quote-dump” an entire paragraph, without properly contextualizing or analyzing the quotes; worse, quote-dumping leaves little or no room for the student’s own voice or analysis. This article, also from our iMagazine, demonstrates recommended usage of quotations in a paper, and then provides a fantastic checklist of questions to answer when deciding whether to quote or not. In addition, the U of Toronto’s Using Quotations page is a comprehensive, one-stop source that shows how, why, and when to quote.
Verb bank. It can be helpful for students to learn to free themselves from the “This author says..” trap. (“This author states” is hardly better, in some cases!). Not only does this construction become repetitive, but merely stating what someone else says does not show how the writer is using the particular source. Is she using the author in question to bolster an idea? Is she providing an example of particularly interesting language or turns of phrase? This verb bank, from the University of Toronto, lists strong verbs that one can use to wield sources in writing.
Finally, I would suggest students participate in one of our workshops dedicated to writing with sources:
- Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Quoting
- Using Sources Strategically
- Summarizing and Responding to Sources
- Ethical Writing and Source Use
Work Cited:
Student Guide to Academic Integrity. https://www.baruch.cuny.edu/facultyhandbook/documents/StudentGuideOct06.pdf
Image: “Recognizing and Avoiding Plagiarism.” Cornell University. Access 6 May, 2015. <https://plagiarism.arts.cornell.edu/tutorial/exercises/questions.cfm>
Published May 6, 2015
