I’m a librarian and I teach a course on research methods at a university. I always talk about plagiarism and, in fact, students can choose to get point by doing an assignment of picking out plagiarized comments from a series of sentences. So far, no one has turned in a plagiarized piece in my class (that I know of).
But I read a depressing article a few years ago in Editor and Publisher. I am not at work so I can’t cite it now. The writer was a journalism school prof who taught a course on ethics. He assigned his students to read a book by a poet about the poet’s material being plagiarized by another writer who got several poems published in lit magazines as his own. (In other words, nothing was changed but the author’s name and maybe the title.)
Anyway the professor asked his students to interview the poet. After several years the poet asked him to stop. He said that a lot of the students who called to interview him were now ANGRY WITH THE POET for picking on the poor plagiarizer, and getting him in trouble. And, remember, these were journalism students.
I am really glad that no one in this thread seems to have that point of view…
Hmmm…I did a search of his website, and apparently he doesn’t have any archives. I’ll email him tomorrow and see if he’ll send me a link or the entire column, with permission to email it to you.
I don’t think any of the Maltese Turkey’s columns are around anymore. The paper expunged them (wisely so) from their site.
I have a very funny story about this, told me by my favourite teacher in history, my college English prof Mr. Peters. Mr. Peters is a giant screaming queen. (This is germane.) He is very gay. More than me. And he is out to all his classes. He teaches gay literature, gay subtext, gay semiotics, everything. (He once made us deconstruct a Madonna video.)
Anyway, once he had this female student whom he caught plagiarizing. He called her into his office to discuss the situation with her. Partway through the conversation, she leans over, starts fiddling with the top button of her blouse, and asks breathily, “Isn’t there any way we can work this out?”
He looks at her. “Sweetie, you haven’t been paying any attention in class, have you?!”
This reminds me of my last senior-level English course - it was 20th-century novels. The professor was not only very good, he was very cool. I did my final paper on Faulkner (his personal fave), and the man gave me a paper he hadn’t even published yet, and welcomed me to use it as a source.
So, anyway - small class, about 12 students - senior level means that most were probably English majors, so this wasn’t some “fluff” class they were required to pass (with as little effort as possible). One day, before the prof showed up, we were talking about the immense amount of reading we were doing (about 15 or so novels, IIRC). At least half of the class admitted that they weren’t even reading the books!
At the time, I wondered how on earth they were going to do their final papers (half of the grade) if they weren’t doing the reading.
I’ve wondered about this for some time, because the majority of plagiarists we’re encountering are from Asian countries. One professor told me that in their native countries, they’re encouraged to take other people’s ideas because their own ideas aren’t good enough…? Can anybody confirm this?
I think you misspoke here, but I want to be sure. Citing certainly IS enough. IF all you do is cite a bunch of sources, and include no original text, you’re guilty of writing a shitty paper, but that’s it. If you’ve given all your sources, and have done no original work, and everything is footnoted, I don’t think that’s plagiarisim. It’s poor research, likely an F grade, but to honestly cite would just make you lazy.
Plagiarism is claiming another’s work as your own. Weaving together a bunch of other people’s work and giving them credit is just summarizing.
Citing is enough when you are directly quoting a source. “Blah blah blah blah” (author pg number). Fantastic.
But when you are paraphrasing and there are several sentences that are your original thoughts, and then you stick a sentence in the middle that is from someone else and you change “cash” to “money”, you are missing the point of paraphrasing, and even with a cite at the end of the paragraph, it’s still questionable.
Of course, that’s better than nothing. Most people don’t bother to cite at all. This is actully what I meant by my original post. I had two different strings of thoughts, and I accidently joined the two. The worst part is when they think they can change “cash” to “money”, they honestly believe they are paraphrasing, and so they believe a cite isn’t required. “But I changed it to my own words!” They claim. But again, they are missing the whole point of paraphrasing as opposed to directly quoting.
My professor in Professional Responsibility told me that there have been incidences in the past where students have been expelled for cheating on the final exam. While I’m still trying to figure out exactly how someone could cheat on an open note, multiple choice exam that’s graded pass/fail, I’m also at a complete loss as to how anyone could cheat at Professional Responsibility. That’s just…that’s just…I don’t know. Stealing from the collection plate comes to mind here.
Heck, I’m so anti-plagiarist, I’m trying to figure out how to cite a brief from an appeal that hasn’t even been heard. The lawyers from one side gave it to me to help me with my research but I can’t properly Blue Book what hasn’t been published yet. Still working on it though.
Sure you can. Look in the front of the Bluebook where they have the practitioner’s notes. Cite it as a paper in a pending case. Probably something like:
Respondent’s Brief in Opposition, Plaintiff v. Defendant, No. 02-34567, (Kan. Ct. App. Oct 23, 2003).
Darn, I read an article about his about two months ago, but I’ll be damned if I can remember where (I’ll keep hunting for the cite.) I think the article was about an Australian survey/study of Hong Kong students studying abroad.
It has to do with a cultural difference – the concept of “plagiarism” is alien to Eastern Asian students whose reliance to authorities and expert opinion presupposes plagiarism. Criticising an authority is not exactly acceptable. Neither is openly challenging the opinion of a prof of other student. Changing an authors words around is disrespectful. Published materials are also considered in some cultures as being community property and “intellectual property rights” is a foreign concept in that sense.
In China under Mao, plagiarism was fairly activley ecouraged – copy a Party document verbatim, express the “correct thought” and receive a good grade. (Cite: Autobiography Daughter of China by Meihong Xu)
It’s not so much that students are told their own ideas “aren’t good enough”, it’s more that they are inclined to think that deferring to authoritative knowledge is most important and it must not be altered. As Shoshana pointed out, there can be different expectations between synthesizing information and being able to find and repeat the “correct information”.
The University of Hong Kong has an online guide to help students understand what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. Many universities incorporate anti-plagiarism workshops in their ESL programs as well, to familiarize visiting students with the expectations of their schools.
I think 15 Iguana is referring to a book by Neal Bowers of Iowa (may Iowa State?). I’ve taught it in my Freshman English course that is mostly devoted to issues of plagiarism (other readings in the course include Ruth Shalit, Martin Luther King, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Stephen Ambrose, Jason Epstein, etc. as well as their unacknowledged sources, plus articles in defense and in attack of what they did.) When they get done taking this course, they can never again claim that they didn’t understand what plagiarism consists of.
If they’re honest, that is.
Of course, the ones who would be dishonest are the ones who would commit plagiarism anyway.
I would be interested in learning more about Google Answers–what it is, how it works, who uses it, etc. I’ve never heard of it.
I work as a tutor. I have seen a lot of papers that are just jigsaw puzzles of pasted-together sentences and phrases from their sources. You’d think it would be akin to “smart plagerism”, but the students who are doing this do not realize that all these out-of-context passages no longer make any sense when strung together in a last minute crazy quilt.
When Mr. tlw and I were undergrads, we worked together on a project for a class entitled “Concepts in American Jurisprudence” which was predominantly made up of sophomore level pre-law students. This was well before the web existed, so busting plagiarists was much more difficult… usually.
This was another situation in which one group member was going to synthesize everyone else’s research into one paper. Mr. tlw , a team member named Dave and I gave our drafts to a woman I’ll call “Maggie” who was an honors student and worked for the professor who taught the class as a general office assistant. (A cushy work-study job.) The professor called the other three of us into his office and asked us if we had any of our notes to show which portions of the research we had done. We did, we showed him, he thanked us and we left.
The next week he returned the projects to everyone in the class but us. He called us back into his office and gave us the news – he was giving each of us the grades that we’d earned, but it seemed that Maggie had helped herself to an old paper from his office and used it with almost no paraphrasing or changes. She lifted entire sections into her segment of our project.
The kicker – the paper was in the prof’s “Favorites” file, a collection of what he considered to be the best (and therefore, one might deduce, most memorable) papers he’d ever received. To heighten the stupidity factor exponentially, the paper that Maggie chose to steal wasn’t just any old favorite, but a favorite that happened to be written by the professor’s son who had the same name as his father. :smack:
Maggie was kicked out of the college – not for the plagiarism (there was a “two strikes” policy on that for some reason) but for the theft of the professor’s property. She was admitted to another school, completed a pre-law program, got into a very prestigious Ivy (think GW Bush) for law school and is now a the chief assistant US attorney for a very crime-heavy (hence professionally important) district. I shudder to think about it, and I hope beyond hope that she mended her ways after the incident with us.
Thank you, Eats_Crayons. I checked out the site. What you said certainly explains a lot. The student I busted, in fact, was Chinese–as are most of the “bustees.”
I still don’t know what else to do to get the message across to them, though, because what’s on the site is the same material we all cover in all the English classes. By the time they get to Composition, they should have “gotten” it. Or so one would think.
I hate this too. For the past couple of years, I’ve assigned papers on * The Merchant of Venice. * On some papers, each time “Shylock” is intended, I get “shellac.” Hilarious, yet pathetic.
Personally, I like having the plagiarized paper on my computer screen when the student comes in. The look on the kid’s face is always priceless.
tlw: I may be able to one-up you on that one. I once read the abstract to a recent paper published by the prof in the course lifted vebatim into a student’s essay… I didn’t even have to go as far as the prof’s filing system to find the original; it was still pinned to the bulletin beard outside his office…