1. Plagiarism
Part 1:
What is it?
How to avoid it: paraphrasing
2. There are some intellectual challenges that all students are faced with when writing. Sometimes
these challenges can almost seem like contradictions, particularly when addressing them within a
single paper. Teachers often instruct students to:
_______________________________________________________________________________
• Develop a topic based on BUT • Write something
what has already been said new and original
and written
• Rely on experts' and BUT • Improve upon and/or disagree
authorities' opinions with those same opinions
• Give credit to previous BUT • Make your own
researchers significant contribution
• Improve your English to fit into BUT • Use your own words and your
a discourse community by own voice
building upon what you hear
and read
3. If these challenges are
not met we risk
committing plagiarism,
which is a very serious
offense in academia.
4. What is Plagiarism?
Definition: deliberately using someone else’s
language, ideas, or other original (not
common-knowledge) material without
acknowledging its source.
– This definition applies to texts published in print
or on-line, to manuscripts, and to the work of
other student writers.
5. What does this include?
1. submitting someone else’s text as one’s own
or attempting to blur the line between one’s
own ideas or words and those borrowed from
another source
Taken from: Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA Statement on Best Practices
8. What are the causes of Plagiarism?
They are many reasons as to why one might plagiarize:
• Students may fear failure or fear taking risks in their own work.
• Students may have poor time-management skills or they may plan
poorly for the time and effort required for research-based writing,
and believe they have no choice but to plagia-rize.
• Students may view the course, the assignment, the conventions of
academic documenta-tion, or the consequences of cheating as
unimportant.
• Teachers may present students with assignments so generic or
unparticularized that students may believe they are justified in
looking for canned responses.
• Instructors and institutions may fail to report cheating when it does
occur, or may not enforce appropriate penalties.
Taken from: Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA Statement on Best Practices
9. How do I avoid Plagiarism?
• There are three main ways we will avoid
Plagiarism:
1. Paraphrasing (Note: You still MUST cite)
2. In-Text Citations
3. Works Cited
10. What is Paraphrasing?
• To Paraphrase is:
–to restate something using
other words, especially in order
to make it simpler or shorter.
11. Paraphrasing
• Use a statement that credits the source
somewhere in the paraphrase or summary.
– Ex: According to Jonathan Kozol, ....
• If you're having trouble summarizing, try
writing your paraphrase or summary of a text
without looking at the original, relying only
on your memory and notes.
12. Paraphrasing
• Check your paraphrase or summary against
the original text; correct any errors in content
accuracy, and be sure to use quotation marks
to set off any exact phrases from the original
text that you use.
• Check your paraphrase or summary against
sentence and paragraph structure, as copying
those is also considered plagiarism.
13. Paraphrasing
• Put quotation marks around any unique words
or phrases that you cannot or do not want to
change.
– Ex: "savage inequalities" exist throughout our
educational system (Kozol).
14. Your Turn!
• Now that we know what plagiarism is and
how to paraphrase to avoid plagiarizing, it’s
your turn to practice!
