So I’m marking term papers and I have a question. In a couple of instances I have papers where I don’t think what’s happening can be classified strictly as blatant plagiarism, but I don’t like it anyway and am wondering what I should do. The students will have a paragraph of sentences, all correctly footnoted, but all from the same source (same book, same page, like 6 sentences in a row). The sentences are very (overly) fluid and smooth, except for certain words which almost make sense in context but not quite. The effect is that the student is copying verbatim or putting together a pastiche of fragments, and then changing key words with a paper thesaurus or MSWords thesaurus, but to words that the student doesn’t entirely understand.
So “paraphrasing” in the very most generous use of the word, and citing the sources, but still not really their own writing or entirely intellectually honest. What do we call this? I’ll need to go to the library to verify that this is what is happening. What would you do?
No teacher here, but a student in my Ancient History class did exactly this - para-plagiarised - and was ejected from the course (and maybe the university as well; couldn’t be bothered to find out).
I’m pretty sure it counts as plagiarism.
Have you referred to the cited source? If the student hasn’t cited correctly, you should dock marks for incorrect citations. How big a paragraph are we talking about? And how often is the student citing whole paragraphs. I wouldn’t have thought that citing a whole paragraph was much of an issue - if it took the original author that long to express his ideam, so be it - but repeated use of whole paragraphs is a whole different matter.
I’d say that, at the very least, you can dock points for poor writing style.
Paraphrasing is more than changing a few words or phrases, it is restating the idea in your own words.
I wouldn’t say it’s a failin’ offense, but I would definitely go back to the original source to confirm your suspicious, make a copy in case you’re called upon to justify your grade, then highlight the offending paragraphs in the term papers and state in no uncertain terms that this is not an acceptable paraphrase, and grade them down for it steeply, because, as JThunder says, intellectual honesty aside, it’s piss-poor writing technique.
Are they going to get their papers back, so they have the opportunity to learn the error of their ways, or is this an end-of-term kind of thing?
I agree with the idea to treat it as poor writing, not intellectual dishonesty. The student isn’t claiming it as his own work, just doesn’t know how to effectively cite the work of others.
Are you an English teacher, or are these papers within a discipline? Is this the last thing the student will be writing for you? I think those are relevant questions. If you have the flexibility to have the student do a rewrite, perhaps with guidance from your school’s writing center (if you have one) that might be good.
As with the poster above, I think it comes back to what discipline you’re teaching in and how much you’ve emphasized proper integration and use of sources. Coming from a composition/lit standpoint, I teach academic use of evidence and have long discussions about what constitutes plagiarism. In short, I think it depends on how you covered uses of evidence and expectations; key this to what level of students you’re teaching (i.e., juniors and seniors should have more skills) and grade down accordingly.
Actually, I think it’s *possible * that these students tweaked the words in order to avoid being caught at plagiarism. I would give them the benefit of the doubt, though. Based on my observations back in college, I’d say that these students probably just haven’t figured out how to paraphrase material. This generally indicates poor writing skills or a failure to master the material.
It’s also possible that they were just too lazy to do so.
First off, you absolutely need to look at the citations. I’m sorry, but why are you asking students to cite works if you aren’t willing to look them up and read them? :smack:
Compare the actual structures so that we aren’t working in hypotheticals here. Definitely offer the students the chance to rewrite if you have that general policy, or else don’t allow these, “paraphrased” sections to contribute to a grade if you aren’t in the habit of permitting rewrites. I think that this is far less sinister than other posters are making it out to be. Obviously the student didn’t perceive themselves as cheating or plagarizing or else they wouldn’t have cited where they paraphrased from. They may simply be lacking an understanding of what’s expected in the course or an understanding of the material. Look into it, and I would strongly argue against failing them on this assignment, and I especially wouldn’t go to the honor council or whatever and risk failing them from your course or getting them expelled before you have a clear idea of what’s going on.
Shucks, Threemae, thanks for the suggestion. Everyone here will gladly run out and read each of the 10 sources that each of these 75 students said they refer to, cover to cover, by Thursday. People should only cite their sources if they expect that they will be checked on each reference? Good message. Since I don’t have time to check each footnote I suppose I’ll let them slide on citing sources-- pointless exercise, I guess.
Compare her sentences to the ones I suspect she plagiarized? That’s a novel idea, too.
In any case, I did find the sources, and two different interesting results: student A does appear to actually write well but was very very sloppy about word choice-- it’s all her wording-- real paraphrasing-- but the fluency with no proofreading ends up sounding bizarre. Student B, on the other hand, is harder to evaluate, as the sources and pages she cited have nothing to do with the written sentence she links the citations to. In fact, one footnote refers to page 215 in a given book and that edition only has 210 pages. So I’m starting to suspect that she did copy from somewhere and then added sham footnotes.
Threemae, sorry (too late) for the bitchiness of the first half of that response. I’d just spent all morning working on this problem and the suggestion that I don’t consider all of this carefully got me all bent. These are third year students and they should be able to cite their sources of information regardless of whether someone will check to make sure they are accurate-- that’s beside the point of just teaching them basic responsible scholarship.
This is their term paper: you should definitely be following up every cite - not the whole book, just the actual cite. They’ve put a lot of work (you hope) into creating their papers, and you’re employed to grade them accurately.
As for the two students, from what you say, I’d suggest marking A down, and something Very Serious - at least a zero - for B, though you might want to check (for example) that the footnote isn’t typoed - perhaps the cite is page 25, not 215? “Gee, B, I’m having a little difficulty locating some of your cites on your term paper. Can you help me?”
Quartz, do you really check up on every citation, like recall all the books they have out and ILL all the articles and such? I’m not accusing you of not doing this, but how do you find the time? Perhaps I won’t be giving their papers back at the exam. What’s your usual turn-around for, say, 60 ten-page papers? Do you manage to do this within a couple of weeks?
Actually. Thinking about this, no. They put a lot of work into these papers and for that reason I think it’s insane to treat each of them as guilty until proven innocent and follow up on every citation every student claims. I do look at the footnotes and I find it interesting what sources they cite and I’m able to tell if they’ve done adequate research or put in minimal effort, and sometimes I learn about interesting sources I hadn’t know of, but chasing every source? Why? Should I ASSUME from the start that every budding scholar is lying? I’d rather put my time into what I’m employed to do-- thoughtfully evaluating these papers and helping them become better thinkers and writers by paying attention primarily to their arguments and writing styles. I’d rather carefully consider their evolving rhetorical skills and understanding of the material. If they say they got a piece of information from a source, I assume that nearly all of them are being intellectually honest with me, and I’d like to respect that, unless something specific about their work makes me question things. I’d like to think that dishonest citation and plagiarism is an exception rather than a rule.
I just had term papers due in one of my classes.
One student in the class blatantly plagiarized, by copying and pasting, character for character, a free essay he found online. (See this thread.)
Another student gave me a paper that was “change a word here and there” paraphrasing for paragraph after paragraph, without much in the way of citations, although the work (yes, singular) she used was in the references list.
A third student gave me a paper that was filled with direct quotations, in quote marks, with correct references, but with virtually no original text, paraphrased or otherwise.
First student got an F in the course. Second student got a 0 for the paper, since she did not give enough credit to her sources. The third student got a D, since she had done research and put together the gist of what she found, but the paper requirements do state that less than half of the paper should come from sources/more than half the paper should be the student’s own conclusions about their research.
I don’t check every citation a student gives me. If it’s a good student, who has turned in consistently good work, I generally don’t check the citations unless there is information that seems incorrect to me. However, if I even think that I might want to accuse a student of plagiarism (intentional or accidental), I do take time to look through the cites and glance through the references, as well as run some sentences through Google. (Our university also uses TurnItIn, which helps with the first round of screening to some extent.)
I teach computer science classes, so it may not seem that it is worth it to go through this trouble. However, when these students get into the Real World, they will be expected to write Real English, so I make them write a paper, as well as weekly essays. (Most of them need the practice, believe me! And those that don’t need the practice can finish the assignments relatively quickly.)
There is also a good chance that some of these students will be responsible for creating marketing material and/or websites for companies they work for, so they much be able to understand that plagiarism and copyright issues can have serious consequences, even for computer geeks.
What this boils down to, though, is the purpose of this paper you are having your students write. If it’s just because they need to write a paper, does it need to be a research paper? If so, then you should be prepared to check at least some of the cites. (Some of my collegues actually have students submit copies of the material they used in the paper with the paper itself, so that the students are aware the teacher will be checking the student’s text with the original text.) If you just want them to practice writing skills, an essay or thought paper might be a better option.
Your grading rubric should also specify how much of the paper should come from sources, and how much should be in their own words. This doesn’t mean that students will follow that, but it gives you a leg to stand on when you fail a paper that is basically a close paraphrase of someone else’s work.
Um, wow. Quartz, are you a teacher?
I don’t teach, but if I were your student, I’d expect you to follow my cites and not be lazy. You’re being paid to do a proper job, not a half-arsed one. And you have an easy solution: if you can’t be bothered to follow the cites for yourself, get the students to photocopy the pages cited and include them when they turn the paper in. Or get some help.
And BTW I proofread fiction, and have caught some significant errors by checking back.
If I were YOUR student I would expect you to respect me enough to give me real feedback on my research methods when I turned in a preliminary annotated bibliography rather than assuming I was cheating at every opportunity and I would hope that you wouldn’t make me shell out 10 bucks worth of photocopies. These are not high school students-- they don’t expect me to treat them like they are in day care. Students already feel irritated by things like Turnitin.com as it makes them feel like they are assumed to be cheaters.
You are not a teacher-- you have no idea what the job involves so take you ‘half-arsed’ and lazy and. . . whatever. Jebus.
Quartz, checking every single reference in every single paper is not remotely feasible. You don’t seem to have the slightest grasp of how difficult and time-consuming that would be.
I challenge you to find a single post-secondary education professional who supports your position.
It doesn’t matter if anyone ever checks them. You have to cite your sources no matter what.
A student who expects the teacher to check every source is a student with a total lack of understanding of why citations are necessary.