Saturday, November 29, 2008
A revisit to an old post
As I grade sophomore research papers, the idea of plagiarism always sits in the back of mind, so I dutifully check for it. I posted this blog last year and find that I did not get the feedback I wanted. So read Kate Kellen's comments on how her students don't understand the concept of plagiarism in writing. Just when do we teach students about this bane of the English teacher's existence? If elementary students are allowed to copy from the encyclopedia for reports and middle school students are allowed to copy from the Internet and other sources with no regard to summarization, paraphrasing, quoting and citing sources, is it then up to high school teachers to correct years of "damage"? I find that almost unbearable and sometimes impossible. The process of incorporating research into writing takes years of practice- not just four years of the sporadic paper in English classes. I wonder what college English teachers have to say on the topic.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
we would never plageraize anything(check my spelling)
i agree i think they should be teach kids at a young age about plagiarism and then most of us wont get confused on wut is plagiarism and wut is change a few words to trick the teachers.
Sophomores? You'd think that they'd be a bit more mature than to plagiarize, eh? I ain't gunna read her comments because I'll sum it up: More children are plagiarizing in their papers, and nobody seems to know who to blame? Parents, teachers, bad influences?
See, told ya I knew what it was. To answer the question about elementary kids, no, they shouldn't be able to copy from their resources w/o creditation (butchered it, but you follow). It is, probably, the responsibility of teachers to fix all the years of damage elementary and middle school teachers did to students, but should it be? of course not. Elementary school is the basic fundamentals of life, and if they learn one thing there, it'll carry on with them into middle school, high school, college, and even life. Now I do understand that they ARE just elementary students and that they mean no harm, but it is doing a great deal of (thinks for word...) difficulty.
Judd, you would be surprised as to who would plaigiarize and who wouldn't. So don't say you "would never." Chris, you shouldn't have to trick teachers--you should honestly mean every word you write, and if you use other authors words, quote 'em. It's not overly difficult, and I don't really see why some students feel the need to resort to plagiarism.
I was being sarcastic sorry
I think elementary teachers should teach them not to plagiarize. I agree with Ashley that if they learn one thing they will just stick with it and not care about what's right. How hard is it to put quotes around something? You can’t take credit for somebody else’s work when your teacher can type it in at google.com and see if you wrote this in your own words or used somebody else’s and didn’t give them credit.
Post a Comment