In junior high school (middle school) an essay was assigned, and I wrote on science fiction.
The teacher asked me if I had copied it. I hadn’t, and said so. She thought it sounded as if it was from a published source. (No big deal, she seemed to take my word for it.)
In my case, it was because sf was my big reading at the time, and I would read any magazine through, including the editorials and reviews, so probably I picked up their tone, had a bunch of facts to include, and for once may have done intro-expo-conclusion as opposed to random statements as they crossed my mind.
This guy is covering one of the standard concepts that get heavily discussed on-line, and on talk shows and by the literati (often with an agenda). He’s making cites, right?..or his source is. You could ask him to show his work, as suggested.
But another factor, it may be the standard American college freshman does not have nearly the background of many graduates of foreign schools at the same age. You may not be used to that level of training among your American students.
I don’t see what you’re getting at here. Isn’t clear and detached the point of an academic paper? Or can’t minorities manage that?? Nor does being foreign to the US make you a minority, either within or without the country.
A word/page count would also help determine a match. Plus bibliography.
Something about the Menendez reference seems odd to me. The 2nd Menendez trial began Feb 1995, so that’s 8 years ago.
It just seems fishy that it would be used as an example in a paper written in 2003. I’d check the dates on the sources, and if they all date from the late 90s, I’d suspect its a paper originally written by another student.
Yes, of course I meant that minorities could not write in a clear, detatched manner, it’s exactly that!
Hmmph!
The offenderati have arrived.
Look at the OP quote again, it is about an issue that is hot for some minorities in the US, and emotional too.
We have someone, I assume, that is a student and therefore likely to be youthful, writing on an issue that may well be a hottie.
Whilst it is not impossible for a young person to be dispassionate about issues that mean a great deal to them, it is also unusual.
I am looking for some indication either way, hot issue, young person and yet a qutoation that betrays none of this, and in the mature advanced style of someone well informed and older.
We have a person whose second language is English, perhaps I am jealous that such a young person has better written language skills than myself.
Very not foolproof. I just checked this on an article I wrote here at work (and have been working on for several days)–it said I had only spent 17 minutes editing it! But I realized this was because I had saved the latest version with a different name – “articlex.1e” instead of “articlex.1d”, etc.
It doesn’t seem all that advanced to me. In fact, it looks like what I do when I don’t really know what to do with a paper- namely make a vague statment, throw in a bunch of references kind of related to that statement (my method of research is to go to the library, walk the approriate aisles looking for titles that might have to do with my topic, and pull quotes out to use as references when I write the paper), and conclude it with a vague call to action. When you just reference away like that, you end up not having to do a lot of actual thinking and formulation of origional thought because the reader will connect the dots in their own way and assume you did it for them.
Anyway, my major expected publishable work- on par with our readings- and a lot of times they’d actually get it. Writing isn’t hard if you know a bit about the process. And don’t be surprised at this turning up in a less prestigious school. One of my friends immigrated in 8th grade, learned English in a year, got straight A’s through high school and 5’s on his AP tests (includeing calculus). He’s now going to community college. Nobody thought to tell the Mexican looking kid that financial aid and SATs and stuff existed. He just thought that college was out of the question for him and that he’d be a printer (a trade he learned in high school) all his life.
The Menedez and OJ references do seem dated, though. Especially because they happened at around the same time.
Of all the papers written by Chinese people I’ve ever read, I can think of one or two that weren’t at least partially blatantly plagiarized, and they were quite obviously written by Chinese people. (Do you know how insanely difficult the subtleties of English writing are compared to Chinese? Many Chinese people can express themselves fine in English, but someone who can really nail all those stupid, arbitrary little words we have in English is a true rarity.) When I’ve said something to the various plagiarizers I’ve come across, (in the role of tutor, editor, etc, not professor) it was kind of unclear to me whether they were even clear on the concept. I would say… feel him out first. Maybe it’s a misunderstanding and you’ll save him from someone in the future who will bring the official rules to bear on him before he knows what’s what. Or, maybe he’s just a cheater and you should bust him.
The only sure way I know would be (as was previously suggested) ask him. Bring him in, tell him you thought the paper was wonderfully written, and ask how he did it. You will probably see right away what the real deal is.
I agree that this could be a useful avenue. Lukey’s Boat, try opening the Word document in a text editor, NOT in Word itself. You will most likely see a lot of nonsense characters mixed in with the words of the paper. At the beginning and the end of the body of the paper you will see a lot of gibberish with recognizable words mixed in. These words may include names of fonts, the name of the file, the name of the person to whom the copy of MS Word is registered, even the type of printer being used or the brand name of the computer. Often the words are interlaced with spaces l i k e t h i s .
[aside]
I see this a lot because I don’t have Word installed on my home computer; recently I surprised the guy handling my mortgage when I asked him about his affiliation with Bank of America. That bank’s name appeared among the gibberish in the loan info he sent me. It turns out that it was his former employer.
[/aside]
Bollocks. I hesitate to use that term outside the Pit, but NFlanders you apparently haven’t ever actually met a college student, or read the work of one. I’ll admit that it seems a little advanced for freshman English composition, but I wrote papers that sounded rather similar to that in high school.
In any case, the quotes are what give the offered passage its flow and fluency- the words of the student him (her?)self are more trite than impressive.
To respond to the OP, I’ve never read any of the material not attributed to others anywhere else, but I am neither a professor nor a publisher. However, nothing in there suggests to me that a student couldn’t have put it together.
Are you guys so sure that 18-20 year olds aren’t compable of such writing? I think you severely underestimate the minds of today’s youth. If there are 12 year olds who have mastered Calculus and making 1600 SATs by 8th grade, why not a freshman who wrote a good paper?
emilyforce, are you telling me that top students at an Ivy League school can’t write that well? If that’s the case, what type of writing would you expect at lesser colleges?
You people are overly exaggerating cheating and have no faith in students. I was a college freshman last year at one of the “lesser colleges” and it wouldn’t surprise anyone if I or a fellow classmate wrote a paper of that level. Great student writing is all around me and I see it on a daily basis. Have faith.
HOWEVER…
As for the case of this particular foreign student, he/she definitely did not write most of the contents of that paragraph, but he/she probably edited most of whatever the original source, to the point where it might not be considered even 50% plagiriazed. So you need to decide what is “enough” and certainly have a talk with him/her. Sometimes it might be easier getting a confession by just asking rather than doing loads of detective work.
I don’t suppose you could post the paper somewhere online in its original format (with coversheet removed, presumably) so we could get a better look at it?
If not, can you post the bibliography?
If the sources he cites are easily available online or in your school’s library, I would imagine it is his own work. Also, I’m guessing your school subscribes to something similar to WebLuis- its the online library system for Florida state universities, and he may have found his sources, or his source (if the paper is plagiarised) in there.
I see a LOT of freshman writing, and I concur with dutchboy and SoulSearching. This could well be the work of a college student – although probably not an ESL student. (I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the student had help from a legitimate source, however, such as a campus writing center.) The fact that the student sounds detached about the subject is actually a point in his favor; college freshmen are rarely passionate about topics related to government or current events, unless they happen to have some personal involvement in the issue.
Couple more questions for Lukey’s Boat:
Does your university library give the students access to any electronic indexes or databases, newspaper archives, etc.? Try searching these as well as the Web.
Are there any discrepancies between the student’s paper and the assignment as written (too long, doesn’t really address topic, wrong citation style or number of sources)? If everything seems in order, are you using a standard set of assignments that may have been used by other instructors in years past, or is yours unique?
Well, I doubt he copied and pasted "ignore or grossy misunderstand evidence " (sic). Maybe he did, but Google can’t find it. My guess is that most of the paragraph is just rearranged statements made by other people. Hard to trace without having to pay for it. A few questions about “his” theories should reveal whether or not they’ve been plagiarised.
I talked with the student (who is Korean, by the way, and moved to America at the age of 10). The student’s sister helped to rewrite the paper, quite extensively.
So, I informed the student to not let somebody else’s “voice” come through so strongly in the paper, because that makes instructors think it was plagiarized. The references all checked out for legitimacy, and they were available at the larger public library where the student said they were from. The student’s previous papers were also written very competently, in the A range, so this one matches the rest.
Verdict= not plagiarized (but be careful to use your own voice.)
I’m a librarian at a university. I’ve taught courses and I’ve caught plagiarists. Right now I’m looking at a different problem.
What gave Lukey’s Boat the right to put someone else’s work up on the web?
I’m serious. I would never assume I had any right to put someone else’s work - ESPECIALLY a student’s - on a website, just because I thought it was suspicious. How would you guys feel if I took something you wrote (off the web) and put it up - without giving you credit by name - because I thought it might have been stolen?
Of course, taking it to a service like Turnitin is different. And I’d waive the rule for a teacher putting a suspicious paper on a website for teachers. That, effectively, is consulting one’s colleagues.
But just throwing it out here on an open website? Sorry, LB, but I think your action was at least as dubious as that of the student with the over-helpful sister.
Crap. I must’ve read something from the wrong poster about the student being Chinese. Sorry about that. Glad you didn’t have to lay down the law, though.
<sarcasm>
Term paper by non-native speaker not good as native speaker term paper. This paper better than native speaker term paper. Must be cheat.
Me professional, go online bulletin board and discuss serious allegation with strangers, post paper online, where students can see. Student called cheat in public forum. Me professional. Me native speaker. Me looking for unemployment check.
</sarcasm>
Lukey’s boat:
Seriously, there must be some code of ethics your school adheres to. Your post cannot possibly follow these ethics codes. Can you tell us if this post meets the guidlines of your school? I’m interested.
Oh come one, Lukey posted a very small exerpt of a long paper to a forum of generally well-read individuals that might recognize the source if it was plagerized. If it was plagerized from a fairly obscure source, this might have been the only way for it to be recognized.
Lukey did not accuse anyone by name- he or she only implied that somebody might be plagerizing. It’d be different if Lukey came on and said “Eve N. Sven from my politics class is a cheater!”. Likewise, Lukey did not say he or she wrote the essay or otherwise take credit for it. There was a good reason for withholding the name, and that is not plagerism, just as it is not inaccurate when a newspaper withholds the name of a minor in a story they are writing
Furthermore, work done by university students generally belongs to the university, and students do sometimes end up with their stuff published without their consent. I do not recall signing any confidentiality contracts with my teachers.
