mercoledì 22 aprile 2009

Pay attention!

“Plagiarism comes from the Latin term “plagium” that means “to kidnap”. So if you plagiarize, you’re kidnapping and stealing others’ work and intellectual property. In the dictionary you can read that Plagiarism can be defined as “the use or close imitation of the language and ideas of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work”. In the academic world, plagiarism can result in punishments; you could be expelled too! I tried to reflect on the reason why students could plagiarize others’ work… With the accessibility of new technology (the Internet) students can plagiarize by copying and pasting information from other sources. When you are supposed to do a research, write an article, essay or your thesis, you should pay attention to each source of information. You have to pay credit when credit is due and you have to avoid plagiarism. Students can unintentionally plagiarize because they get confused; they have poor notes; they may be lazy or intellectual unprepared, or simply they don’t know how to correctly reference sources. The question of students’ choices of sources is a very important issue for another reason: copying and pasting from other sources can prevent students to develop a critical approach and to tell things without using their own “voice”. Furthermore, students may choose sources which are inappropriate, off-topic, or contain incorrect information. Anyway the things you have to bear in mind to avoid plagiarism are: - do not use without referencing the source or including the information in quotation marks and - do not use someone’s ideas without referencing the source.

1 commento:

  1. Hello Sere!
    I really liked your post (as you know!)because you made efforts searching information also in the vocabulary!
    I would like to give you some advices...even though you made very few mistakes! Good job girl!!

    - in the first sentence I think it would be better to use "which" instead of "that" because in this case the realtive fits better
    - "accessibility of new tecnologies" the plural is better.
    - (for example the Internet)
    - "you have to pay credit when credit is due..." to avoid repetition I think it would be better to write "you have to pay credit when IT is due..."
    - "student can unintentionally plagiarize because..." in this list I would have put commas instead of semicolons because when you list examples is better to separate them with a comma.

    Bye bye!!

    RispondiElimina