Many educators face the challenge during one point of their teaching careers, of teaching writing to their students. When teaching writing, all aspects of it should be taken into consideration. As educators, we focus mainly on grammar. Once the students has dominated grammar well enough, educators tend to quickly jump into the next topic/ lesson at hand- organization.
The how to’s of composition are essential in order for the students to achieve a well written assignment. If the students have dealt with composition before, than one can assume that they must know the basics, but is a teacher is dealing with beginners, the teacher might want to take it step by step. How to write a paragraph, organize it and integrate topics into it are well rounded areas of the lesson plan of teaching composition. When dealing with teaching composition and expecting for students to produce a composition, many times we assign works which need thorough research done on the topic assigned. Teachers make clear that research is not only one reference but 4 or 5 at the least. By giving out these types of assignments, we as educators are exposed of being handed compositions which in some form have been plagiarized.
As much as we (educators in general) focus on teaching the well necessary structure, one very important topic is sometimes lost in plain sight and that is plagiarism. For those who yet do not understand the concept of plagiarism, according to Millikin University’s Staley Library’s article Preventing Plagiarism: A guide for Students, they state that the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines the act of plagiarizing as “to use and pass off the ideas or writing of another as one’s own.” Reporter for the New York Times Felicia Lee stated in her article Are More People Cheating? Despite Ample Accounts of Dishonesty, a Moral Decline Is Hard to Calculate that studies have documented the rise in recent years of students cheating. According to Lee, “the internet has certainly made it easier to plunder’s other peoples work.” (Lee, F, 2003)
In order to prevent plagiarism of occurring, we first must understand why students cheat. Robert Harris states that by “understanding some of the reasons students are tempted to cheat on papers, you can take steps to prevent cheating by attacking the causes.” (Harris, R. Anti- Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers) Harris also outlines reasons why students might feel compelled to cheat or plagiarizing. Harris argues that plagiarism can occur if or when students are most interested in taking shortcuts. If the students feel overwhelmed with work that they already have, they are most likely to no want to spent time working on their paper. Also some students are procrastinators and tend to put off assignments until the very end leaving them with a very little amount of time to work on their paper or a case may have it that some students might feel that their writing capabilities are inadequate and fear receiving a bad grade or even failing all together. (Harris, R., Anti- Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers). Presbyterian College Writing Center Coordinator Jill Frey also concludes in her article Preventing Plagiarism and agrees with the previous reasons stated by Robert Harris. Frey also established that a student may be ignorant or careless with documentation standards therefore, committing plagiarism.
Aside from all of the different reasons there are , we as educators can not only focus on the why students cheat but we also have to focus on how it is our duty to, by all means necessary, prevent it from happening. There are certain practices that we can do before teaching composition such as to have a well established and strong course policy on plagiarism. Professor Irwin Weiser of Purdue University has used as a policy on plagiarism a well defined statement of what plagiarism is and also adding that if any student has any doubts if they are about to commit plagiarism or not, to please contact the professor due to severe consequences if plagiarism occurs. (Purdue OWL, Avoiding Plagiarism: Best Practices for Teachers)
Sometimes, just stating the consequences of plagiarism is not enough. Educators should also require specific components in the paper as well as to require a step by step process. Robert Harris states that by being very specific on the usage of resources such as for example a chapter of the book A or B, a specific article given in class and so forth, the students will be inhibited to copy of other papers and also by sitting specific due dates to hand in certain parts of the composition and revising their draft can also help prevent plagiarism from occurring.
As much as we try, plagiarism can always occur, therefore, educators may rely on plagiarism detectors but before using these detectors and relying solely on them and having them as our educational crutch, we must enforce and reenforce plagiarism policies in the classroom and involve the students more in the writing process. This can be the assurance of minimal cheating happenings.
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