Plagiarism

Gen 300 Skills for Professional Development

December 7, 2007

Definition of Plagiarism:

It is every student’s duty to know and understand the definition of plagiarism. This paragraph will define plagiarism and give some examples of how students plagiarize. The definition of plagiarism according to the American Heritage New Dictionary of cultural Literacy, Third Edition is: “Literary theft. Plagiarism occurs when a writer duplicates another writer's language or ideas and then calls the work his or her own. Copyright laws protect writers' words as their legal property. To avoid the charge of plagiarism, writers take care to credit those from whom they borrow and quote” (American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition, n.d.). Plagiarism comes in many different forms. You are plagiarizing when you turn in someone else’s work as your own or fail to use quotations when quoting someone. Copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit or giving incorrect information about the source of a quote is a form of plagiarism. Copying sentence structure of a source without giving credit even though you changed the order of the words is also considered to be plagiarism. According to the website Plagiarism.org “coping so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not” (iParadigms, LLC, 2007) constitutes as plagiarism. By citing sources plagiarism can be avoided in most cases. If a person just simply admits that they have borrowed the material by providing the information necessary to find the sources which was cited, usually this will prevent plagiarism. It is extremely important for students to understand the definition of plagiarism in order to avoid being accused of plagiarizing. Understanding plagiarism is not only important for students in the classroom, but equally important for students who elect to get their education through the online setting.

Plagiarism in the Classroom:

The word Plagiarism comes from the Latin word plagiarus, which means kidnapper. The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, 2nd edition defines plagiarism as: “The appropriation or imitation of the language, ideas and thought of another author, and representation of them as one’s original work (2007).

Plagiarism in the classroom is a common form of academic misconduct in which a student represents ideas or wording as their own without proper attribution to the source in which they “borrowed” the information. Plagiarism can be as little as using a sentence or short paragraph from an article and not giving attribution. In 2005 almost 40 percent of college students, according to the CIA research admitted to engaging in some of form of plagiarism, compared to about 10 percent in 1999 (Larson, 2006). According the CIA survey about 77 percent did not see that a use of a sentence or two as a major ethical lapse Students are categorized as Absolute or Transitional knower’s (Gallant & Drinan, 2006). Students who are in both categories may not consider that their ideas or information as valid or important and may feel that they cannot site their own knowledge and may rely on only what the experts think.

There are several reasons that students plagiarize. They may think it is an easy way for a good grade, they may be afraid of putting their own work out for interpretation or review and they may just be lazy. Students try to melt several sources together for their papers then cut and paste them into their article, thus resulting in