Plagiarism ENGL 103 Dr. N. Langah

Plagiarism  Plagiarism refers to a kind if cheating that has been defined as: ‘the false assumption of authorship: the wrongful act of taking the product of another person’s mind and presenting it as one’s own Alexander Lindey, Plagiarism and originality. (New York Harper, 1952) It is sometimes a moral and ethical offense.

Plagiarism Involves two types of wrongs: a.Using another person’s ideas, information or expressions without acknowledging that person’s work constitutes intellectual theft. b.Passing off another person’s ideas, information, or expressions as your own to get a better grade or gain some other advantage constitutes fraud.

Penalty for plagiarism:  Course failure  Expulsion from school  If you are a professional writer/journalist, you can loose your job too.  Spoils students relationship with teachers  Students who plagiarise are loosing their tuition fee and loose the opportunity to learn how to write a research paper

Unintentional plagiarism  The purpose of a research paper is to synthesize previous research with your ideas on the subject. You are free to use other persons’ words, facts and thoughts I your research paper, but the material you borrow must not be presented as your own creation. In order to avoid this, continue to cite your sources and to mark the passages you quote

Unintentional plagiarism  Writing research paper in a second language: Sometimes students are not confident about using grammatically correct language in English. For this reason, they prefer to copy the ideas of the author which turns into a kind of plagiarism.

Forms of plagiarism  Repeating or paraphrasing words: Original Source: Some of Dickinson’s most powerful poems express her firmly held conviction that life cannot be fully comprehended without understanding of death. (Wendy Martin, Columbia Literary History of the United States) Plagiarism: Emily Dickinson firmly believed that we cannot fully comprehend life unless we also understand death. But you may present the material as follows: ‘As Wendy Martin has suggested, Emily Dickinson firmly believed that we cannot fully comprehend life unless we also understand death (625) To quote full source: Martin, Wendy, “Emily Dickinson”Columbia Literary History of the United States. Emory Elliott, gen. ed. New York: Columbia UP,

Forms of plagiarism  Taking a particularly suitable phrase Original Source: Everyone uses the word language and everybody these days talks about culture ….”languaculture” is a reminder, I hope, of the necessary connections between its two parts … (Michael; Ahar. Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation [New York: Morrow, 1994] 60). Plagiarism: At the intersection of language and culture lies a concept that we might call “languaculture” (60) Citing full source: Agar, Michael, Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation. New York: Morrow, 1994

When is Documentation unnecessary:  Familiar proverbs: ‘all that glitters is not gold’ or ‘you cant judge a book by its cover’  But you must quote information that you took from any other materials (books, articles, newspapers)

Reference for this presentation:  Joseph Gibaldi, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (New York: The Modern Language Association of American, 2003), p