I’m taking a technical writing class; my professor wants us to write a letter of complaint. I wrote one last semester fora a business writing class. Can I submit the same work for my new class?
Is this something I should ask my current professor?
Well, I know at my university submitting the same item for two different classes is considered plagerizim and is grounds for expulsion from the university.
I would tread very carefully around this particular issue.
My guess is that the two courses have different focuses, different techniques, different emphasis. Using something you wrote for a prior course will probably produce a poor grade, because the instructor of the new course will be looking for different points. My guess: the instructor of a business writing class is probably looking for clarity, concision, and tone; the instructor of a technical writing class is looking for more detail, ability to express complexities, etc.
You could probably use the same concept (whatever the complaint was about), but I would certainly redraft the letter.
Ask your professor. When I was TAing tech writing classes, I’d have frowned upon it.
Since when is copying from yourself plaigerism? Damn, most of my the dissertation is then plaigerised from earlier papers, boy am I in trouble.
I busted a student doing this last semester. Broke my heart because he was a good kid, but the honor system here is like gospel to the current administration…But yes, you are talking about plagiarism. Just write the new letter. Even though the chances of having the prof. find out are slim, it does happen. At my institution we scan every paper ever written into a data base, and which searches the entire database for duplicates…that in itself usually deters those who wish to plagiarize.
It’s plagiarism to represent your work (for which you’ve already received credit) as work that was done with the more recent lesson goals in mind. If you approach the professor and tell him that you’ve already written a complaint letter for a previous class, and you feel that it meets the standards he’s set for an example, you might be able to get credit for it by writing an accompanying exegesis that cites specific turns of phrase as examples of lessons you’ve learned. If I were a really cool professor, I’d give you an “A” just for coming to me with that idea. If not, I’d say “Good, you already know how to do it. Writing another one specifically for this class should be easy. I’ll expect excellent work from you.”
As for your dissertation, if you’re reusing minor works to craft a major work, I thought it was expected that you’d cite any of your published works that you re-use, and that non-published works are assumed to be rough drafts. For grading purposes, handing a paper in is the equivalent of “publishing” (even though it is clearly distinct from the academic meaning of “publishing a paper”). For example, I routinely wrote technical papers at my last job that re-used whole paragraphs from other papers I had written. Nonetheless, I would cite my own work as a reference in those cases, because the particular technical writing I did demanded citation of any fact. Because they were published to a very small audience, I would often have one paper published and receive phone calls from analysts in other agencies asking to see the source papers I cited. Occasionally, I’d tell them “Oh, that paper is really an in-house draft. If you’ve read paragraphs five and six, you’ve read that whole piece. I can read you the executive summary, but the conclusions are out of date now.”
Depends on your professor. Most of mine took the uberhardcore “Even thinking the same thought twice is PLAGIRISM!” (insert dramatic organ music!). However, some of them had no problem with it and a few even said “Oh, sure. I encourage reusing your work, so long as it’s relevant.”
How can using your own thoughts be plagiarism?
From dictionary.com-
It’s definitely not plagiarism to turn in your own work, but it would best to ask the professor first because it just may be in his/her mind.
Whatever it is, it’s not “plagiarism” (representing someone else’s work as your own).
As for whether this is something you can legitimately do, that’s up to the prof. Definitely ask.
Do the students sign any consent for you to scan there papers? If not are you not at the least stealing their intellectual property?
If you have to ask, don’t you think there’s at least a chance it might be considered plagiarism?
I’ve had students complain “Well, I didn’t KNOW that was considered plagiarism, so how can I be guilty?”
Answer: because you have my e-mail, and you have the twelve seconds it would take you to compose a note asking. That you didn’t (not you, Gazelle–students in general) tells me that you kind of knew what my answer would be, and you decided to shield yourself in ignorance.