Plagiarism

Plagiarism

The consequence of plagiarizing material carries with it shame, exposes academic lethargy and may become costly. Most students take away with them the importance of academic integrity from professors, counselors, peers and even the media. With so much emphasis put on the subject one would think plagiarism would be unheard of amongst writers. However, data presented by Associate Dean of Student Discipline Steven J Tyrell (2004) studies showed 24 students were accused of academic misconduct in a single school year.

Webster’s dictionary defines plagiarism as “A piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work” (Webster). The act of plagiarizing is taking someone’s words and idea’s and using them as if they were your own. Plagiarism has contributed too many students getting poor grades, and has even cost some students their academic careers. With so much at stake, why would a student take the risk? Some students don’t’ know that they are, in fact plagiarizing. Poor research skills and lack of proper timing on the student’s part along with poor preparation can make it very easy for the student to plagiarize without them even knowing, and then there are the students who plagiarize because it’s so easy to do that they feel it must not be wrong.

There are many types of plagiarism, and reason on why students commit plagiarism. Unintentional plagiarism usually occurs when someone uses someone else’s material and they do not cite it in their work or places it on their reference page. There are many types of unintentional plagiarism, citation confusion is when the writer does not know or ignore the rules of proper referencing and citation. Paraphrasing is when the student tries to copy varies works but they stay with the original idea. Word Substitution is when a student takes out one or a couple words to try to make it his/her own.

Avoiding unintentional plagiarism is difficult to do if the student is not aware that they are plagiarizing in the first place but there are many ways to make sure that this does not happen. The student can always make sure that they prepare ahead on the topic that they are suppose to write on (Gladen, 2006). When the student is prepared they understand that they cannot take someone else’s work with out giving that person credit for their contribution to their report. If you are still unsure about proper citing of your paper it can be best to have someone else go over your work, you will be able to see what you might have plagiarized and what is actually just your information. The student also needs to make sure that they start all of the research early and not wait until the last minute to try to do a 1500 word report, this way they can be very prepared.

Unintentional plagiarism is hard not to do but, it is critical that as the student we do not actively take place in doing this activity (Gladen, 2006). There are copyright laws the can convict you and most universities will not tolerate any type of plagiarism and for this reason alone is why we should not do it. If you are a good and honest student that works hard you should not have problems, but if you are lazy and always wait until the last minute then you should be concerned and hope no one finds out that you plagiarize.

Most students consider being told that they will be expected to write a paper by their college professor, frightening. One of the first things that may come to mind would be to figure out a less painful encounter in order to complete the paper. This would indeed open up the door to intentionally plagiarize the assignment. Intentional Plagiarism is the deliberate unethical practice of duplicating another’s work while planning to take full credit. This means digital, hard-copy, and borrowed works from the original owner. Some students have a rather, “whistle-blowing” different opinion concerning copying another’s work. There appears to be a huge misunderstanding in reference to the presentation of someone else’s hard work. Many believe that they should be permitted to infringe on any great written work as an honor on behalf of the original author.

A very high percent of students who commit plagiarism have a poor planning scheme in place or none at all. They have not figured out what they need to execute in order to maintain a healthy plan. Sometimes the lack of planning stems from being disorganized and untidy. Great planning plays a key role in the creation of an un-plagiarized research paper. If one fails to properly plan out their entire course of action. This will indeed set them up for failure in the future. While planning students should always place personal goals ahead to help in achieving your plan.

With a great plan in place this would create a good