You missed my point. The student could possibly be identified by the paper, which just became public, and the ‘teacher’ is suggesting the student cheated, although he/she had no proof or even reason to think so.
And in that posting, the ‘teacher’ pointed out the irrelevent fact the student is a non-native speaker so has doubts about the legitamacy of the writing. The school’s rules must say something about grades not being giving out based on ethnic background. Suspecting a student is cheating because of his ethnic background would seem to violate that rule. Going public with such stuff should be against the school’s rules. I’m hoping Lukey has the fortitude to answer my question.
Good luck trying to identify the student by one paragraph from an entire paper, especially since you don’t know where this student is, or who he/she is, and so on.
As for saying I had no proof, or reason, for thinking the student might have cheated, I can only offer my experiences of other students trying to do the same thing. I had 2 examples of plagiarism 3 months ago, one of which was a paper “borrowed” from a web source and turned in as the student’s own. It was a good paper–but the only “proof” or “reason” I had to go on was my gut feeling that the paper was too good. The other paper was also too good for the student’s English ability.
So, following inductive reasoning:
1 student turned in a paper that was “too good.” It was plagiarised.
Another student turned in a paper that was “too good.” It was plagiarised.
So, when a student turns in a paper that is “too good,” am I not correct in assuming that the possibility of plagiarism exists?
(minor correction: legitimacy is the correct spelling)
You focus too closely on one point of my argument–the point is not that the student is a non-native speaker, but rather that the English appeared to be much better than the speaker was capable of–which turned out to be not true.
You seem to be accusing me of giving out grades based on ethnic background, rather than by their mastery of English composition, regardless of ethnic background, yet your proof of that is based upon one incident. If it is any consolation to you, I don’t judge by ethnic background, meaning that a native English speaker can indeed be a C level writer and a Japanese exchange student can be a B+ level writer.
No, I didn’t say the person may have been cheating because he or she was white. I said the person may have been cheating because the paper seemed much better than I thought their writing ability was, based on earlier papers the same student had written and in comparision to other Freshman writers.
As for going public–where was confidentiality broken? How do you know I am talking about a real student? Can you find this student? Can you steal this person’s work and plagiarise it for yourself now? How do you know I’m not yanking your chain? How do you know I am really a teacher, other than taking my word for it?
Fifteen Iguana:
Good question, that one. The only answer I can give is curiosity–I was interested in seeing just what people who were distant from the situation thought, to see if I were being overly sensitive to the problem.
Good question-- but because it is rhetorical, it is hard to answer.
If it were a paragraph of something of I wrote, and I found it on the web without being attributed to me, I may ask to be given credit, or I may not–it depends.
Maybe so. It is indeed quite a different situation than consulting colleagues–but note, again, how sketchy the information is, and the fact that it is a fragment of the work. Maybe that isn’t good enough to protect the original author–but I suspect that it is.
More than anything, though, I was interested in seeing if I was over-sensitive to the writing–which, as it turns out, I was.
Wait a second here, who are these people (Billy for example), to say that acusations of plagiarism of a person of any race are a bad thing?
I would be complimented if my work was proven to be my own because it seemed “too good”. If I were an ESL student, I would be twice as pleased. However, this is not the case “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.”
Since when is it appropriate to get grades based on your sibling’s translations/interpretations? NEVER. It’s a freaking ENGLISH class!!! How dare you play the “race card” here? Are you saying that every accusation of fault against minorities is race-based?
Exoneration is the highest form of credibility, trial by fire. Even though the said student was an “admitted cheater” depending on your semantic definition, Billy seems to think that the thing to do is cry “racism”. How shallow. Your <sarcasm> switches were very helpfull, maybe you could provide a cite for Tarzan-related discrimination amongst university campuses.
Whoa, there. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The copyright belongs to the student unless he or she has explicitly made an agreement assigning the copyright to the instructor or the school. The student is not an employee, and this is not a “work for hire”.
For my degree I was obliged to do an Arts course (why I ask you?), the credit for the course came from two papers.
Paper 1 came and went with me getting a B (I was sure I deserved an A) and comments to the effect that it was insufficiently researched, too partisan and tabloid-journalistic in style (Shock! Horror!)
So for paper 2 I was pretty determined to do good research, keep my opinions out of it, and write in less colourful terms. After I’d submitted my paper, the lecturer spoke to me, saying it was an excellent paper and asking about my sources – it is only today reading this thread that I realise that she was “checking me out” for plagiarism. Bah!
Anyway, I received a high enough mark to give me an A overall, and she asked if they could distribute my paper as course material for future courses, which was nice.
Even so, it is legal to reproduce short excerpts of other people’s copyrighted work for the purposes of criticism and comment, as in reviews. It seems to me that Lukey’s Boat is well within her rights to do so here.
The ‘teacher’ played the race card by using the race of the student to help bolster his/her assertion the student may be cheating. If race wasn’t an issue in this matter, like the teacher is now claiming, then why was it mentioned in the OP?
I hope the teacher thinks about the implication though before next term. If he/she suspects good papers may be cheats, great, but if he/she feels more strongly about non-native speakers be cheats with good papers, the non-native speakers will be audited more often than the natives, and that means ethnic background(national origin) plays a part in the grades. Teacher may not be willing to admit that now, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
And unfortunately, Lukey was not willing to answer my question about the ethics codes at school.
Anyway, this has fallen to a great debate, so blast away, you have my input, and I’m done with this post.
And since the OP has been asked and answered, and the teacher has already defended her actions, any other discussion in this direction would probably get the thread moved to another venue.