Plagiarism, defined in dictionaries as “stealing and using the ideas or writings of .

Follow these guidelines to avoid plagiarizing:

1.       Use your own words and sentence structures when writing your paper, even when writing about the ideas of others.

2.        When paraphrasing, (putting an idea in your own words), avoid using any words from the original, unless they are essential technical terms.

3.       If you use any of the original words from a source, you must acknowledge them by enclosing them in quotation marks. It is still regarded as plagiarism if, without quotation marks, you use some of the original words and phrases from a sentence and change others. Also, it is still regarded as plagiarism if you keep the sentence structure of the original and change all the words to synonyms.

4.                  Acknowledge all ideas taken from other writers using AP A format. This applies to any ideas or theories that specialists in the field can recognize as belonging to a specific person. It does not apply to ideas and information that are common knowledge in the field. This is the most difficult area in which to judge whether something is plagiarized.

a.      Buying a paper from an online source.

b.      Submitting work previously graded in another course.

c.       Having a friend or roommate look over one’s paper and correct grammar and

punctuation problems.

d.      Having a friend look over one’s paper and rewrite small sections of it.

e.       Paying someone to write one’s paper.

f.       Submitting simultaneously the same or very similar papers in two courses.

g.       Going to the Writing Center on campus and seeking help on a paper.

h.       Writing the entire paper yourself, but copying just a few sentences from a written source.

1.      Collaborating with a friend or classmate and writing a paper together.

Examine each situation and decide if the writer needs to cite a source and why.

Copies the exact words or a “unique phrase” from somewhere.

Uses information gained through interviewing another person or listening to another person.

Mentions something that is common knowledge: folklore, common sense observations, shared information within field of study or cultural I group.

Compiles generally accepted facts.

Reprints a diagram, chart, illustration, or picture.

Writes some information that can be found undocumented in at least 5 other sources.

Uses information from a newspaper.

Quotes a passage that is too long, so leaves out a few sentences.

Changes some words in the original sentence but maintains the basic structure of the sentence.

Borrows the ideas/thoughts of another but the language is his/her own. Analyzes or critiques the writing of another author.

An even better case can be made that the new English curriculum has directly caused a deterioration in the writing skills of American students. Writing instruction in the early 1960s tended to be rather mechanical. Teachers focused Ion such aspects of the writing art as grammar, punctuation, syntax, and spelling. This type of instruction was fiercely criticized ill the late 1960s as stifling creativity and fostering an imitative kind of writing. In my opinion, some of the criticism was well-founded, especially for bright students, but as usual the baby went out with the bath water. (From Copperman, P. (1980). The literacy hoax. New York:

Morrow Quill Paperbacks).

1.          Teachers focused on such aspects of the writing art as grammar, punctuation, syntax, and spelling (Copperman, 1980).

2.           Instructors concentrated on such parts of the skill of written composition as “grammar, punctuation, syntax, and spelling” (Copperman, 1980, p. 45).

3.           Copperman (1980) claims that a mechanical approach dominated the teaching of composition in the first years of the 1960s.

4.          Copperman (1980) asserts that some of the criticism of early 1960s writing instruction was justified, especially in the case of intelligent students, and that what was good was thrown out with what was bad: ” … the baby went out with the bath water” (p. 45).

5.          During the later years of the 1960s, two strong criticisms were made of such teaching of writing: first, that the students could not be creative and, second, that only imitative writing was encouraged (Copperman, 1980).

6.          One view (Copperman, 1980) is that, although there was good evidence to support some of the critical judgments, the effective aspects of instruction were given up together with the ineffective.

The second problem would have guaranteed the failure of the new math even if the first problem had not existed. The overwhelming majority of elementary-school teachers have had inadequate training in mathematics, and thus did not understand what they were expected to teach. A program that attempts to transmit knowledge not possessed by the teacher is doomed to fail. As this fact became clear to curriculum directors and textbook publishers across the country, they compounded their error by attempting to make the new math teacher-proof. This involved developing self-explanatory materials and mechanical, repetitive techniques which were based on underlying mathematical principles. Unfortunately, the new techniques were far more complicated than the old ones had been, the teachers still did not understand what was going on, and an entire generation did not learn how to compute. (Prom Copperman, P. (1980). The literacy hoax. New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks.)

1.      A program that attempts to transmit knowledge not possessed by the teacher is doomed to fail (Copperman, 1980).

2.       Copperman (1980, p. 60) asserts: “A program that attempts to transmit knowledge not possessed by the teacher is doomed to fail.”

3.       A course that attempts to transmit knowledge not possessed by the teacher, according to Copperman (1980), will never succeed.

4.       A course that tries to convey understanding not held by the teacher is fated to be unsuccessful (Copperman, 1980).

5.       If the instructor does not have the knowledge that the student is meant to learn from a course, then the course will never succeed (Copperman, 1980).

6.       Without the first problem, the second one would still have been enough to stop the new math from working.