I’m not sure if this is the right forum, but it is related in a way to literature, so I thought I’d give it a shot. If I’m wrong, sorry.
I have a research paper in my hand (which I am grading) that I am absolutely, 100% certain is plagiarized. A student who can normally barely form coherent sentences is suddenly able to say that “Consistently throughout Franny Glass’s religious deterioration, J.D. Salinger investigates problems in both religion and mysticism.” (Not a deep thought exactly, but trust me when I say that there is no chance in hell that “mysticism” is in this child’s vocabulary.) Furthermore, the paper is not cited AT ALL.
I have used turnitin.com in the past (in fact, two years ago I used it with the same student when she was a 9th grader, and found that she had in fact gotten the paper from the internet), but this time I had no luck with the findings. I know that I have the right to give an F on this paper anyway, but I would feel more confident with the inevitable parent denial if I had the “original” in front of me. (This is what I have done in the past.) I could also just sit this child down and ask her to summarize her paper orally, which she obviously would not be able to do. However, this would not prove as much as I’d like it to, as the papers were handed in a couple of weeks ago (it’s taken me a long time to grade them, but this is the last one) and she could claim she has forgotten the details of her paper, and it would not be too outrageous a claim.
Does anyone know of another means to prove plagiarism, other than the aforementioned turnitin.com? I’d appreciate any help or suggestions for this problem.
Sounds like you have actual experience in dealing with this sort of thing, but have you Googled portions of the text? Maybe the original’s online. I know that’s happened before. (I googled the sentence you provided, with no luck.)
As dantheman has already mentioned, we can most certainly help you search, but a few more “suspicious” lines of text would make it a little easier. This one was getting close.
Just found it on SparkNotes! I’m set for tomorrow morning. Thanks; I had tried Googling parts of the text, but with no luck either. I tried “Franny Glass Mysticism” and the SparkNotes popped up. Excellent.
That’s a rather short quote.
I played around with googling short phrases from it, and came up with:
“Through Franny Glass’s spiritual breakdown, J. D. Salinger explores issues in not only mysticism and religion but also family, celebrity, education, and intellectualism. Of course, the religious themes are important: By the end of the “Zooey” section, Salinger seems to have arrived at a spiritual doctrine, to be followed by many of his characters.”
As someone who just got accused of plagarizing an entire paper and spending the last two days eating way too much worrying and crying enough to give me a headache for the last 7 hours, it’s not fun to be the student either.
Of course, this student is a bit …uh…yeah. This is the 2nd time she tried with you? Geez.
Anyway, the details of my case were that I was a little careless, and bookmarked research sites that could not be reaccessed, so I lost all my sources and had to go back to them one by one. Never, ever created a word file and copy and paste things you might use in the paper without quoting the source right with the material (I thought it was fine because I had them bookmarked and could double check later.) I gave him the rough draft and he knew of my issue/problem even then, he asked me to cite a few things here and there, which I did. But of course, careless/stupid me, forgot a few areas (which I had copy/pasted without giving the source because I didn’t know it at the time). So yeah, I was stupid, my teacher agreed, but decided to change my D to an I/C and give me a month to write an entire new term paper. …Yay. More work. But it’ll teach me to be careless again.
I guess I’m just saying all cases aren’t this cut and dry, and I’m still kind of shaken over my possible D, and possibly having to retake his class over and face him again, and being kicked out of the honors college because my gpa plummented.
Sigh. I think I gained 5 pounds in the last two days.
/Shadez
I know that all cases aren’t this cut-and-dry. I have read several papers with “iffy” citation practices which seemed accidental. The students got a bad grade for their lack of attention to detail, but received a passing grade. This is obviously a different case.
Oh, by the way, I found the rest of the paper on ClassicNotes. So far I have only written that her dishonesty is disheartening (and the F, of course). I’m debating whether to write more (like the “teachers can google, too” comment. She will also receive 7 demerits for cheating, as our school’s policy dictates.
Not really. I doubt any student would be shocked to learn that Google exists. Besides, the only way that knowing how the teacher found them out could help the student in this case would be if they found a place from which to plagiarize that’s not searched by Google. Which is possible, but not likely.
GMRyujin, if the teacher mentioned Google in the note, the student has no way of knowing how the teacher found out the student was teaching, since they don’t know which site they found when Googling.
There have been some recent discussion of plagiarism on blogs. For example, http://www.joannejacobs.com/archives/2003_05_11_archive.htm#200291922. Check out the comments and the links for some really stupid attempts, including a couple of instances of a student plagiarizing the professor’s own papers.
Term papers are such a pain in the ass, why do teachers make students do these things?
Why are you playing cop? You are saying “Im going to get this kid, I will look in the internet night and day! I will keep this child from entering the 10th grade.”
Teachers who give a lot of needless homework like term papers are not doing the students a service. I hope, because of the internet that term papers are a thing of the past.
A 14-15 year old kid needs to be outside enjoying life, not sitting inside a sterile library sweating over a paper for Ms. Anal Retentive.
