If you plagiarize an assignment, that grade will result in a zero. Plagiarism occurs when a writer uses the ideas, wording, organization, etc., of another writer without proper citation, whether intentional or unintentional. This includes having someone “help” you write the paper, buying the paper online, or lifting ideas, sentences, and/or paragraphs from another text. Keep an electronic copy of all assignments and be prepared to send it to me immediately if asked. Please go to the MSC Library site for further information on avoiding plagiarism. Failing this course is the common penalty for plagiarism.
Note:
A plagiarism prevention service is used in the evaluation of written work submitted for this course. As directed by the instructor, students are expected to submit their assignments, or have their assignments submitted, through the service in order to meet the requirements for this course. The papers may be retained by the service for the sole purpose of checking for plagiarized content in future student submissions.
For additional information, see:
The information covered on this website will be covered on the next quiz, whether we have an opportunity to cover all aspects of it or not.
NOTE: I do not read essays with the intent of discovering plagiarism; however, when it becomes obvious that more than just an occasional uncited statistic has crept into the paper (perhaps several sentences or entire paragraphs), when the language (diction--the words--and syntax--how those words are arranged to form sentences) becomes more sophisticated and academic than the typical college freshman, then red flags go up and I begin to suspect plagiarism.
What plagiarism does:
- Throws doubt on the authenticity of all further work done in a class by the individual
- Brings greater scrutiny to an entire class of papers—if one person plagiarized, then surely many more did as well; these, too, must be rooted out, and that takes even more time in grading
- Insults & angers the instructor (whether teacher or professor), sometimes forcing him/her to change plans for the ENTIRE class.
Examples of plagiarism:
" . . . students who used social media had an average GPA of 3.06 versus non-users who had an average GPA of 3.82" TAKEN FROM AN ARTICLE FOUND online titled, "Are social networking sites good for our society?
Used in the paper it became one of MANY, MANY statistics, all of which were plagiarized; the student's paper read:
Students who use social media had anaverage GPA of 3.06 while non-users had an average GPA of 3.82 and students who used social networking sites while studying scored 20% lower on tests.
Almost the ENTIRE paper was like this.
English 1101 is meant for YOU to increase YOUR critical thinking and YOUR critical reading, so that YOU can better express YOUR ideas in a clear, complete, concise manner. It matters what YOU THINK, what reasons YOU can give and explain on these papers, NOT what you can find on the internet, which could be easily found and read. THINKING and WRITING are HARD.
Plagiarism Example #2:
"The immediacy provided by social media is available to predators as well as friends. Kids especially are vulnerable to the practice of cyber-bullying in which the perpetrators, anonymously or even posing as people their victims trust, terrorize individuals in front of their peers. The devastation of these online attacks can leave deep mental scars . . . ." TAKEN FROM an article written by Brian Jung, found online.
Used in the student's paper, this became the entire fourth paragraph, with an additional opening and closing sentence, written by the student. At the end of the paper, the student attempted to list the reference (incorrectly), but made NO acknowledgement of the source in the text of the paper. Thus, the student plagiarized.
Understand and make NO mistake: whether it is intentional OR unintentional--IT DOES NOT MATTER. IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to understand and avoid plagiarism.
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