Yarmouth Staff

designing plagiarism-proof assignments that spell out how works should be cited and that include personal reflection and alternative final projects like creating a brochure;

This instruction should focus on the supposedly simple technique of summarizing sources, which is in truth not simple. Many students are far from competent at summarizing an argument— and students who cannot summarize are the students most likely to plagiarize.

Students don't need threats; students need pedagogy.

undermining his or her community's ethics, jeopardizing his or her authority, and erasing his or her identity

Educators should also communicate why writing is important.

students don't know how to find good sources online, they will enter a search term in Google and look only at the first few sources that come up. Consulting only general sources, and therefore going no deeper than a general understanding of the topic, students "can't think of any other way to say it,

begin with Wikipedia but then guide them in how to find more varied, deeper sources of information using library databases such as EBSCO, LexisNexis, or ProQuest to verify Wikipedia's claims.

none of the 18 papers contained any summary of the overall argument of a source.

none of them used fresh language

A writer who works only at the sentence level must always quote or paraphrase.

Teachers often forget how difficult summarizing another writer's argument is.

Such instruction might begin with techniques of paraphrase

She begins by explaining that inserting synonyms is not paraphrasing

How much unattributed copying from online sources, for example, derives from poor source selection?

students who cannot summarize are the students most likely to plagiarize.

assumption that if students are working from hard-copy sources only, the problem will disappear.

We believe that an approach far different from either warnings and punishment or attempts to curtail online research is warranted. Teachers who wish to prevent plagiarism should devote extensive instruction to the component tasks of writing from sources. This instruction should focus on the supposedly simple technique of summarizing sources, whic

ally plagiarizing since at least the 19th century. Doris Dant's 1986 survey of high school students, conducted well before the Internet became a cultural phenomenon, confirms this finding: Eighty percent of the high sc

We believe that an approach far different from either warnings and punishment or attempts to curtail online research is warranted. Teachers who wish to prevent pla

March 2009 | Volume 66 | Number 6 Literacy 2.0    Pages 64-67 Plagiarism in the Internet Age Rebecca Moore Howard and Laura J. Davies Using sources with integrity is complex. The solution is teaching skills, not vilifying the Internet. Many teachers see plagiarism as a simple, black-and-white issue. Teachers often bring up the topic at the beginning of a research paper unit, discuss it in one classroom period, and never say the word plagiarism again unless students are caught copying, when this term is dragged out once more to accuse and punish the guilty. Teachers warn students not to copy—or else—and present them with citation guides and the trinity of techniques to write using others' research without plagiarizing: quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing. The onus then falls on the students, who are expected to use these techniques well, assuming that they know how to do so. In an age when students gravitate to online sources for research—and when tremendous amounts of both reputable and questionable information are available online—many have come to regard the Internet itself as a culprit in students' plagiarism. Some teachers go so far as to forbid students from researching online, in the mistaken assumption that if students are working from hard-copy sources only, the problem will disappear. We believe that an approach far different from either warnings and punishment or attempts to curtail online research is warranted. Teachers who wish to prevent plagiarism should devote extensive instruction to the component tasks of

Many teachers see plagiarism as a simple, black-and-white issue. Teachers often bring up the topic at the beginning of a research paper unit, discuss it in one classroom period, and never say the word plagiarism again unless students are caught copying, when this term is dragged out once more to accuse and punish the g