DANGER!
You need to understand how important it is NOT to just copy and paste other people’s work and ideas.
You will read, watch and listen to a lot of different ideas and information at university. When you hand in an essay or do a presentation, you will need to use some of those ideas or information to support your own ideas. However, if you just copy someone else’s work and don’t show clearly where those sentences or ideas come from, then you are stealing. This is called plagiarism (pronounced PLAY-JAR-ISM) and universities take this very seriously. This is because teachers ask you to write essays to find out what you think what you see, or find out how much you understand. Essays are given grades and grades make your GPA (Grade Point Average), so if you use or copy and paste someone else’s writing, you are not being honest. You are stealing.
Why do students do this? There are many reasons. Here are some:
- “I don’t want to make mistakes in writing I give to a teacher.”
- “I can’t write well.”
- “I didn’t have time.”
- “A famous person said this and they said it well. Why do I need to rewrite it?”
What would a teacher answer to these?
1 and 2: It is natural not to want to make mistakes in your writing. It is also natural to worry about your writing ability – especially in English as it is not your native language. But writing in English is like playing a sport. If you don’t do it, you won’t get better. Also, by writing in your own words, you show your teacher what you can and can’t do, and the teacher can then support you and plan lessons to help you improve. Writing at university should be learning about how to write, how to structure ideas and how to argue. Making mistakes is a natural part of the learning process.
3: At university, more than high school, you will have to learn to manage your time well. There will be weeks with lots of homework and big assignments due. From the start, you need to make a habit of planning your study. If you get sick or something happens in your life that stops you from studying, make sure you tell the teacher, and maybe they can give you some more time to do your homework. (This is called getting an extension: you can ask you teacher, “I was sick so can I have an extension please?”)
4: Of course there are many quotes by famous people and there are lots of people who write very well. And of course you need to build your own ideas on other people’s ideas. You can use other people’s writing in your essays, but you need to show clearly where you use someone else’s writing and who said it. This is what writing in an academic way is about. Have a look at the page about ‘How to show your sources: APA入門‘ to find out more.
To review, don’t copy (plagiarize.) Copying (plagiarism) includes:
- Copying writing, ideas or pictures from a book, the internet or another student’s assignment without showing where it comes from or putting it into quotation marks. (“”)
- Copying and changing only a few words or phrases from any of the above without saying where it comes from..
- Working as a group and then presenting the work as only your own. (This includes showing your homework to other students for them to copy, asking another student to do your homework for you, or paying someone to write an essay for you.)
What does plagiarism (copying) look like?
Imagine you have to write an essay about education. You find these two famous quotes by Albert Einstein:
- “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
- “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
Here are parts of essays from two imaginary (not real) students.
Student 1:
Education is an important part of everyone’s lives today. But what is important in education? Imagination is more important than knowledge, so you have to learn to use your imagination. But many teachers try to make students remember many difficult ideas or facts. They just talk to students in difficult language. This is not good because if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
Comment: Student 1 has simply copied the two sentences into their own writing (I have kept them in italics to make them easy to see.) This is a clear case of plagiarism (copying without giving the source), and the student will get 0 (zero).
Student 2: (This student has not copied/plagiarized and will get a good grade.)
Education is an important part of everyone’s lives today. But what is important in education? Albert Einstein was known to believe that, if you compare knowledge and imagination, imagination is the more important thing. But many teachers try to make students remember many difficult ideas or facts. They just talk to students in difficult language. This is not good because, as Einstein also said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” This means that any teacher that cannot explain things simply probably does not understand the information very well.
Comment: Student 2 has used one quote with exactly the same words as the original and put it in “ ” (inverted commas), and rewritten one quote into the student’s own words – but still showed clearly that it is something Albert Einstein said. You would write this way in a regular essay or if you were writing something for media like a newspaper, but if you are writing a more academic style, there is more you need to do to show your sources of information and ideas. (See pp.36-7 for a more detailed example and information.)
Want to know more? Here is a link to an introduction to paraphrasing from the first year Information Literacy class. You can also click here to read what the Online Writing Lab at Purdue University has to say about plagiarism.
KSU Faculty of Foreign Studies
Department of English