Rachel Buck and Silvia Vaccino-Salvadore
Volume 5
Chapter Description
For many students, the word “plagiarism” invokes a sense of fear: a fear of being caught for doing something wrong and facing sometimes very harsh penalties such as receiving a failing grade on an assignment or being expelled from college.1 You might be familiar with these feelings and associating plagiarism with stealing someone else’s words and ideas and claiming them as your own. But, as we hope you understand by the end of this chapter, plagiarism is much more complex, especially as some of you can probably remember a writing instructor at some point telling you to write a text “in your own words.” So, when does an idea or a word become your own? When does an idea or language that you read need to be cited and when is it “common knowledge”? In this chapter, we hope to dispel some of the fear you might have about plagiarism by sharing experiences of our own students, presenting some academic definitions of plagiarism, and then discussing an activity that we completed with Rachel’s students in a first year writing course at a 4-year university in the United Arab Emirates. We’ll end with some ways you can better identify plagiarism in your own writing, especially when writing a research paper so you’ll be able to focus on how to develop ownership of your own language and ideas rather than being concerned about the consequences of plagiarism.
Alternate Downloads:
You may also download this chapter from Parlor Press or WAC Clearinghouse.
Writing Spaces is published in partnership with Parlor Press and WAC Clearinghouse.