16.2.7: Avoiding Plagiarism

Author: Ms. Amy Mendes, Lecturer in Communication, Dalton State College

Plagiarism in a problem in many classrooms. It is a problem for students, since plagiarizing robs them of learning opportunities and can get them in serious trouble. It is a problem for teachers, since it leaves them unable to tell how much a student really knows and causes them to have extra administrative work to deal with students who plagiarize.

Unfortunately, it is also common. Some researchers estimate rates of cheating in undergraduate classrooms at over 80% (McCabe et al., 2001a, 2001b; McCabe & Trevino, 2002; Dawkins, 2004; Callahan, 2004; Whitley, 1998). This statistic includes other types of cheating, but we can deduce from it that plagiarism is common. And some researchers say that committing plagiarism in college can be a predictor of dishonesty in the workplace later in life (Hilbert, 1985; Lucas & Friedrich, 2005). Failing an assignment or a class is a bad consequence, but if this sort of behavior continues, it can ruin one’s career.

One reason that plagiarism is such a problem is that students don’t have a good understanding of what it is. Although students may articulate some understanding of plagiarism, and that it must be avoided, they do not understand the purpose of citation itself. They may only think of it as a required convention of academic writing, rather than as a means of learning and contributing to an ongoing accumulation of knowledge (Lofstrom, 2011).

Some researchers have found that students feel confused by the rules, and express fear that they may accidentally fall into plagiarism even when trying not to, or even to accidentally echo a phrase previously encountered and mistake it for their original thought (Ashworth, Bannister & Thorne, 1997). This is consistent with other’s findings that students cannot identify plagiarism when given examples, do not know how to paraphrase and cite (Marshall & Garry, 2006; Yeo, 2007; Pecorari, 2003).

How do we teach about plagiarism?

The good news is that simply educating students about plagiarism helps reduce it (Landrau, Druen & Arcuri, 2002). But, a complicating factor in the public speaking classroom is the confusion that exists for some students about citation standards in verbal communication (Holm, 2002). Some students who may exhibit appropriate citation behaviors in written assignments fail to do so in speeches.

In a recent study (Mendes, 2017), student respondents on a plagiarism survey indicated some interesting things about their understanding of plagiarism. First, many respondents specifically used the terms “stealing” or “theft” and “words.” The implications of this usage are that these students focus specifically on others’ words, but not necessarily on thoughts, ideas, or conclusions. However, another significant minority of students used “thoughts” in their answers, indicating a more thorough understanding of citation requirements. Another important group of words that came up in the study was “knowing,” “intentional,” or “purpose,” indicating that plagiarism behaviors are always intentional (and that perhaps unintentional plagiarism does not count).

Below are a series of activities that will help you reach a better understanding of some important ideas about plagiarism:

• How to use quotation marks.

• When and how to paraphrase.

• How to cite information from multiple sources.

An important thing to remember about quotation marks is that you shouldn’t use very many. Unless there is important technical language, a direct quote you need to reference, or a significant phrase, it is better to paraphrase the information you use, rather than directly quote it (more on paraphrasing later). If you are quoting something, the a proper citation should include the quoted material and a parenthetical citation (Author’s last name, Year of publication). Anytime you are going to use more than a couple words in the same order as the reference text, go ahead and add the quotation marks – but ask yourself if you could rephrase the idea so that you use different words. DO NOT just leave off the quotation marks!

Paraphrasing is when you take the information from a source and put it in your own words, usually be combining it with information you already know, or by explaining how the information is relevant to the topic you are writing about. It can be more difficult that you expect, because sometimes once you have read the original author’s phrasing, it is hard to think of a “better” way to say it. Think instead of how you will be telling us something about the information – why is it important, how it relates to your topic or argument, whether it agrees or disagrees with other information in your speech.

Read the following passage, and from the information provided, take 1 quotation and 2 paraphrased sentences:

Cricket will be joining the crowded U.S. professional sports landscape as part of a $70 million licensing agreement between the United States of America Cricket Association (USACA) and Pennsylvania-based Global Sports Ventures, LLC. The move is a significant first step in growing the popular sport in the U.S., which has the second highest viewership of cricket in the world behind only India. More than 1.4 million people in the U.S. watched the ICC World Twenty20 competition won by West Indies earlier this year.

Cricket was a popular American sport before the Civil War, with rules that were formalized by Benjamin Franklin in 1754. George Washington played cricket in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, in 1778 and the first international competition in any sport was actually a cricket match between the U.S. and Canada, according to the USACA. The multiyear licensing agreement means a franchised Twenty20 (T20) professional league will be established within the next year or so. There are ongoing talks about the number of teams, the cities in which they’ll be based, they facilities in which they’ll play, and the creation of player contracts for both men and women (Matuszewski, 2016).

Sometimes you will be combining information from more than one source in one paraphrased statement. Using the 2 passages below, write a sentence that contains information from both in paraphrased form.

What happens, though, when a child with talent and enthusiasm has nowhere to play? The U.S. only has one purpose-built ICC-certified cricket ground, at Central Broward Regional Park in Lauderhill, Florida. In 2015, the Cricket All-Stars, two teams captained by Sachin Tendulkar and Shane Warne, two of cricket’s best-recognized names, played three exhibition games at Citi Field in New York City, home of the New York Mets, Minute Maid Park in Houston and Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, two other base-ball venues, using drop-in cricket pitches for games of 20 overs a side. (Kakade, 2017)

An Indian-American cricket enthusiast has announced plans to build as many as eight cricket stadiums across the US at an estimated cost of $2.4 billion to professionalise the game in the country. The eight proposed stadiums, each having a capacity of 26,000 people in New York, New Jersey, Washington DC, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Illinois and California, would create as many as 17,800 new jobs in the US, said Jignesh (Jay) Pandya, chairman of Global Sports Ventures (Press Trust of India, 2017).

Hopefully, this practice exercise has made it easier to understand when and how to cite, paraphrase, and combine sources. Your instructor can answer other questions you have.

References

Ashworth, P., Bannister, P., and Thorne, P. (1997). Guilty in Whose Eyes? University students’ perceptions of cheating and plagiarism in academic work and assessment. Studies in Higher Education, 22(2), 187-203.

Callahan, D. (2004). The cheating culture: Why more Americans are doing wrong to get ahead. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Inc.

Cutler, T. (2017). Can cricket finally crack America’s sport market? Newsweek. April 12, 2017. Retrieved from http://www.newsweek.com/jay-pandya-c...-league-582352

Dawkins, R. (2004). Attributes and statuses of college students’ association with classroom cheating on a small–sized campus. College Student Journal, 38, 116-129.

Landrau, J., Druen, P. and Arcuri, J. (2002). Methods for helping students avoid plagiarism. Teaching of Psychology, 29, 112-115.

Lofstrom, E. (2011). “Does plagiarism mean anything: LOL.” Students’ conceptions of writing and citing. Journal of Academic Ethics, 9, 257-275.

Marshall, S., Garry, M. (2006). NESB and ESB students’ attitudes and perceptions of plagiarism. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 2, 26-37.

Matuszewski, E. (2016). Professional cricket league is coming to US with $70 million licensing agreement. Forbes. September 29, 2016. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikmat.../#457a7cf9375f

McCabe, D., Trevino, L., and Butterfield, K. (2001a). Cheating in academic institutions: A decade of research. Ethics and Behavior, 11, 219-232.

McCabe, D., Trevino, L., and Butterfield, K. (2001b). Dishonesty in academic environments. Journal of Higher Education, 72, 29-45.

Mendes, A. (2017). “What even is plagiarism?”: Measuring undergraduates’ comprehension of source attribution standards in a Public Speaking class. Proceedings, 86, Spring.

Pecorari, D. (2003). Good and original: plagiarism and patchwriting in academic second-language writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 12, 317-345.

Press Trust of India, 2017. Indian-American to build 8 cricket stadiums in US. Times of India. February 2, 2017. Retrieved from https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/cricket/news/indian-american-to-build-8-cricket-stadiums-in-us/articleshow/56930109.cms.

Yeo, S. (2007). First-year university science and engineering students’ understanding of plagiarism. Higher Education Research and Development, 26, 199-216.