Plagiarism is
so easy to do. Most students have plagiarized at some point,
and
often times unintentionally. Plagiarism is an academic
offence that can lead to being expellerd from a university.
According
to Collin's
Cobuild Advanced Learner's Dictionary, "Plagiarism
is the practice of using or copying someone else's idea or work,
and pretending that you thought of it or created it."
There are
many degrees of plagiarism. All are considered cheating
and academic dishonesty.
Using someone's idea without giving the author credit, paraphrasing
without citing sources, using a friend's outline to write
a paper, and using a paper found online are all examples of
plagiarizing. Even if it is just one small part of a long
paper, it is plagiarism.
With the function
of COPY/PASTE internet browsers, it is all too easy to
plagiarize, even without intention.
You are allowed
to and invited to research and read other people's ideas,
results of their investigations, and quote them, paraphrase
them, use them to help you...
You simply need to cite your
sources.
Some steps to
help you paraphrase correctly and avoid plagiarizing are:
- read the information
- understand
the information
(Look up words.
Reread. Ask for help. If you stil don't understand the information,
then this source is not
good for you. Look for another source.)
- stop looking
at the source
- Think
about and write your ideas about what you
read.
(After, you may look back and compare to makes sure you spelled
correctly and wrote statistics without errors, etc.)
- Cite
your source. Use a Citation
Generator online to help make it easy: APA
Free
citation generators include: noodletools.com, citationmachine.net, studentabc
Consequences
for plagiarism in the English department:
Any plagiarism
found in an assignment or academic dishonesty of any kind
will result in a zero for the month. In the case of plagiarism
or academic dishonesty, the student must redo the assignment
receiving no academic grade.
Failure to redo the assignment
will result in the loss of privilege to the semester
exam. This second chance assignment must be checked by the
teacher
as well as the coordinator.
Do
your work. Do
it for you.
Do it right.
And if you don’t
know how, ask for help with enough time before the due
date to still be successful.