UNIT 12: STUDY SKILLS
Thinking about plagiarism
1 Read this extract from a university student handbook. The handbook is for a course that combines English language study and academic study in order to prepare students to enter a Masters level degree in an English-speaking university. Answer the questions that follow. PLAGIARISM IN YOUR ACADEMIC ASSIGNMENTS
Ten marks are awarded for use of sources and referencing in each of your academic assignments. Poorly referenced assignments or ones which do not fully acknowledge use of sources will not be awarded these marks. Any incidence of plagiarism in academic assignments is taken seriously and will be dealt with according to the university policy on plagiarism. Depending on the severity of the infringement, students who plagiarise will be required to have an interview with the Programme Manager. This may result in loss of marks or a more severe penalty. Any disciplinary procedure that is invoked due to a serious plagiarism issue will remain on your university record. The formative assignments in term 1 are designed to orientate you and help you understand what is expected of you. You are expected to use these assignments to help develop your strategies to avoid plagiarism. The marks for these assignments do not count towards your final scores. The summative assignments that count towards your final mark are different. In summative assignments 1 to 3, you are expected to demonstrate the ability to avoid plagiarism. In summative assignments 4 and 5, you are expected to be fully competent at avoiding plagiarism and incidences of plagiarism will be dealt with as if you were postgraduate students. The procedure for university postgraduate students is as follows if you are suspected of plagiarism. You will receive a letter inviting you to an interview to discuss your work. You may bring a friend to this interview. You will be interviewed by two members of the academic staff. If the staff are satisfied that there was no explicit intention to deceive, then no further action will be taken. You will be asked to comply with university policy in future and resubmit the work. If the charge of plagiarism is upheld, you will receive a letter that acts as a formal warning. You will receive a score of zero for this assignment and the warning will remain permanently on your university records. You may be given the option to resubmit the work within a certain timescale.
THE UNIVERSITYS DEFINITION OF PLAGIARISM
Plagiarism is defined as the unacknowledged use of another person's ideas, words or work either verbatim or in substance without specific acknowledgement. For the avoidance of doubt, plagiarism may occur in an examination script as well as in assessed coursework, projects, reports and similar work, and may involve the use of material downloaded from electronic sources such as the Internet. Further, the inclusion of a source in a bibliography is not of itself a sufficient attribution of another's work.
1 2 3 4 5 6
Is plagiarism acceptable for any of the assignments in this course? Are university students expected to acknowledge source texts in timed examinations? Is it OK to provide details of references in a bibliography without acknowledging the source texts in the assignment itself? Why do the summative assignments 4 and 5 suddenly become more serious for these students? What is the first stage of the university disciplinary procedure? What happens if, at the interview, the academics decide that a student did not intend to plagiarise?
Copyright 2008 Pearson Education. All rights reserved.www.pearsonlongman.com/languageleader/
