I feel like this assignment was easier than the ghostwriting assignment. My paper was an informative paper on the destruction Cane Toads have caused on the natural habitats of Australia. I learned about the threats of non-native species in a class I took a couple semesters ago. The paper was basically a summary of my lecture notes which came from my textbook and paraphrasing sources that I found on the web. I feel like the topic I chose made it relatively easy to plagiarize because being an informative paper, I didn’t need to include any of my own opinions so all I had to worry about was including relevant information in the paper. Paraphrasing the information that I found was the most difficult because I had to have a good enough understanding of what the source was saying to write it in my own words.
This assignment made me realize that it is actually easier to plagiarize and get away with it than I had previously thought. It seems that as long as you don’t use word-for-word quotes, it is difficult to find out that you plagiarized, at least through google. Originally, I had tried to copy and paste from my sources but I knew I would be caught within 5 minutes so I decided to paraphrase a lot. As a result, my classmates found it fairly hard to find what I did and didn’t plagiarize.
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4 comments:
I did the same thing you did john. My information came from a poli sci class. Did you feel the need to not cite the information you already had known without looking up in the book?
I think its true that now I know that I probably can get away with plagiarism (especially if you cite from a book and not the internet), but it is still something a little freaky because of the mere thought of getting caught and the repercussions your actions can have. I wonder how many students really do get away with plagiarism every day at this school. Obviously there is no way of measuring, but I would be very interested to know.
Scott brings up an interesting point. It correlates with the common knowledge question. It's so hard to decided whether it's something known or something that needs to be quoted. To draw the line is so difficult and hard to say where.
The whole common knowledge, not common knowledge thing is one area that makes it truly difficult to determine if you have plagiarized or not. Something that may be common knowledge to you or someone in your field may not be to another and if its not to them, would you be a plagiarist in their eyes? The gray area that this presents always leaves me questioning whether or not I am going to be reprimanded for plagiarizing because I felt something was common knowledge when in another's eyes it was not.
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