Welcome to the:

PDGP Anti-Plagiarism Workshop

Identifying and Avoiding Plagiarism: A How-To Workshop

Dr. Emma E. Buchtel

Outline

• Plagiarism: Basic definition and why we get upset about it (why you shouldn’t do it)

• Why students plagiarize & how to avoid it• Exercise: What is plagiarism?• Exercise: What is a good paraphrase?• Exercise: What is APA style?

Plagiarism

• When you are writing a paper / essay / etc., using someone else’s words, ideas, or other work (graphics, information, data, etc.) without properly acknowledging where they came from.– Note that this means you need to know APA style

so you can “properly acknowledge!”

Why it makes your professors unhappy

• We assume that everything you write is your idea and your own words / your own way of writing.

• So, if you plagiarize, it’s the same as telling us a lie: “This is me! Oh, oops, no it isn’t.”

• It wastes our time… cheats your classmates… and cheats YOU of your own learning / education.

Why students do it

• Lack of time– (Solution: Give yourself enough time.)

• Insecurity with English– (Plagiarizing will not help you! You’ll just get in

trouble, and won’t increase your skills. Editing your own work, or getting a friend to edit it, will help!)

• They don’t realize that they’re doing it

Is this plagiarism?Plagiarism exercise

In pairs, please go over the Handout #1 and decide whether (and why) each example is or is not plagiarism.

Why is it plagiarism?

• Original:• "It has become fashionable to reject the notion of absolute

objectivity on the grounds that objectivity is simply unattainable or, even if attainable, is undesirable."

1. I feel it has become fashionable to reject the notion of absolute objectivity on the grounds that objectivity is simply unattainable.

This is obviously cheating. Word-for-word copying, and pretending that it is his own words and opinion.

Why is it plagiarism?

• Original:• "It has become fashionable to reject the notion of

absolute objectivity on the grounds that objectivity is simply unattainable or, even if attainable, is undesirable."

2. According to Lisa Staffen (1996), it has become fashionable to reject the notion of absolute objectivity on the grounds that objectivity is simply unattainable.

This is still cheating. The direct quote needs to be in quotation marks; it is not his own words.

Why is it plagiarism?

• Original:• "It has become fashionable to reject the notion of

absolute objectivity on the grounds that objectivity is simply unattainable or, even if attainable, is undesirable."

3. I feel it has become stylish to reject the idea of absolute objectivity on the grounds that objectivity cannot be achieved.

Again, still cheating: This is just “hiding” the fact that the original way of writing this sentence came from someone else. Changing a few words does not make it a paraphrase.

Why is it plagiarism?

• Original:• "It has become fashionable to reject the notion of absolute

objectivity on the grounds that objectivity is simply unattainable or, even if attainable, is undesirable."

4. It has become stylish to reject the idea of absolute objectivity on the grounds that objectivity cannot be achieved (Staffen, 1996).

This is still cheating. Again, it is hiding the fact that the original way of writing the sentence came from someone else. Even though there is a citation, it’s for the idea only, and does not acknowledge the time and effort that Staffen used to write the original sentence in those particular words.

Paraphrasing

• Summarizing an idea in your own words• How to do it well:

– Think about the meaning of the original passage, and why it is important for your own essay. Write about it in your own personal way, and so that it makes sense to include it in your essay.

– Try saying the meaning to yourself in Chinese and then writing that in English, without looking back at the original text.

• How not to do it:– Change some of the original words to synonyms– Change the order of the words

Paraphrasing exercise

• In pairs, go to Blackboard:https://elearn.ied.edu.hk/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp

One of you can log in to find the paraphrasing exercise (in the class PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY, under Class Materials).

Together, do two paraphrases: a bad one (plagiarism), and a good one (no plagiarism).

APA style

• APA style is used by all psychologists, telling us how to do in-text citations and create the list of References.

• The handbook has a useful summary of APA style for the most common types of references:

http://www.ied.edu.hk/reg/student_handbook/chap_en15.html

• Try it out: Handout #3

APA style

• In-text citations:– …is very important (Adamson, 2009; Buchtel & Underwit,

2003; Clark, 1974).– “Let’s not quote very much” (Brown & Green, 2004, p. 888).

• Reference list:– “Hanging indent”: indent all lines after the first one for each

reference. – No bullet points, numbers, etc.; no full first names… use

RefWorks and you’ll never be wrong!• http://www.lib.ied.edu.hk/research/refworks/index.html

Other useful websites

https://www.indiana.edu/~istd/overview.html(especially the “examples” section)

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_plagiar.html(especially the “paraphrasing” section)