Journal# 4

A War of Words
By: Jim Paterson
THE Journal Sept 2007

This article by Jim Paterson discussed the important topic of plagiarism. The article described the pros and cons of plagiarism and introduced different people and their methods of how they have handled plagiarism in school.
Linda Miller had developed a technique called “trash and treasure.” She uses this technique to teach children of all ages how to identify plagiarism and also shows them the proper way to do research.
The article mentioned some sources on the internet that claim that they can detect plagiarism. These programs, such as turnitin.com, require you to submit the paper on-line. Charlie Lowe does not agree with anti-plagiarism programs. Lowe, along with the members of the Conference on College Composition and Communication feel that “they create the wrong atmosphere for writing, finds students guilty until proven innocent, and infringes on students rights.” The developers of the programs claim that their programs word as a deterrent. A study showed that students who were informed of the anti-plagiarism tools were less likely to submit plagiarism and diminished it. While warning students of plagiarism had no effect on them.

Questions:

Would you use an anti-plagiarism for your student’s papers?
I would. Or at least I would threaten to. I think that it can be used as a deterrent and there would be less plagiarism represent in the students papers. Before I would threat to use this method I would want to teach the students the proper way to do research and site sources. After the students were comfortable with proper research, I would stop using it hoping that they would know better and produce a quality paper.

What would you do so that students would take plagiarism more seriously?
I think that it is important that students learn about it at a young age. I don’t think students are educated enough in elementary school or don’t fully understand what it is. If we had programs like Linda Miller’s in the article, children would have a better understanding. I never got the concept of plagiarism until I was in high school. Also, I would make a list of all the negative consequences plagiarism can lead to.