The seventeen-year-old blond-haired son of Joe and Jane Smith was caught yesterday for attempting to plagiarize the work of a famous scriptwriter in his literature assignment. But this is not the first time he has done it. It’s the third time this year. The first two times, the teachers had not let it go out and instead had long talks with him about the consequences of such a practice, but all explanations had apparently fallen on deaf ears.
When questioned about the reasons for his attitude, the youngster just denied having done it and joked saying that great minds think alike, citing a well known proverb. This time, however, no joke will help him as the school authorities are taking actions. To begin, they have informed the family about their son’s deeds. But after that, the headmaster has promised to make of this case an example of the institution’s new policy of zero-tolerance to plagiarism.
But, what is plagiarism? And what is wrong about it?
According to Joseph Gibaldi (M.L.A. Style Manual) plagiarism is: «Using another person’s ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source constitutes plagiarism…. To plagiarize is to give the impression that you wrote or thought something that you in fact borrowed from someone, and to do so is a violation of professional ethics…. Forms of plagiarism include the failure to give appropriate acknowledgment when repeating another’s wording or particularly apt phrase, paraphrasing another’s argument, and presenting another’s line of thinking..»
In addition, the Council of Writing Program Administrators, on its on-line issue (January 2003), explains that, “In an instructional setting, plagiarism occurs when a writer deliberately uses someone else’s language, ideas, or other original (not common-knowledge) material without acknowledging its source.”
No doubt, the Internet has reduced the world into a village and information on any issue, no matter where the student finds himself, is just a click away. Students may plagiarize intentional or unintentionally. Naturally ‘copy-pasting’ is faster and any-day less tedious than self-composing and typing out original material is better.
As a consequence, cases like John’s are becoming a commonplace practice in the school field.
What are its causes?
There are several reasons why this phenomenon is more common nowadays and most of them points to the students as can be read in the text below, but are there any other causes in addition to the ones that are referred to in this text ?
- Students may fear failure or fear taking risks in their own work.
- Students may have poor time-management skills or they may plan poorly for the time and effort required for research-based writing, and believe they have no choice but to plagiarize.
- Students may view the course, the assignment, the conventions of academic documentation, or the consequences of cheating as unimportant.
- Teachers may present students with assignments so generic or unparticularized that students may believe they are justified in looking for canned responses.
- Instructors and institutions may fail to report cheating when it does occur, or may not enforce appropriate penalties.
The Council of Writing Program Administrators 2005-200
Which are our shared responsibilities?
It is well known that the unlimited access to the World Wide Web makes plagiarism a common habit among students nowadays. However, teachers are committed to stop this tendency as plagiarism has important and serious consequences in our high school. Generally speaking, there are three factors which explain our shared responsibilities and that favour plagiarism among highschoolers and students at higher levels of education:
1. lack of parents’ involvement and supervision.
2. the vast accessibility to the Internet and online materials.
3. the assignments are not clearly defined, they are too open.
Best practices 
It is necessary to work hard to inculcate simple habits to avoid plagiarism in high school, like paying attention while reading instructions in order to comprehend techniques of doing reference work, incorporating double-quotes while quoting someone word for word, widening the resource base for research work, and most importantly, avoiding the tendency to cheat or copy from classmates or anyone else.
Rather than copying a person’s own words and presenting them as own, learners benefit from knowing how to paraphrase and explain someone’s words; therefore, how to express own ideas, reasoning, and critical-thinking have got to be taught.
Conclusion
There is no magical solution for solving the problem of plagiarism, but a first step would be trying to understand the real causes behind it, which are often social in nature. One way to do this involves discussing this issue in class and consider academic integrity a serious and highly important factor.
It is also recommended to dedicate some time for Class orientation at the beginning of a session, school term, or language course. By ding this students can be warned and explain the characteristics of the course, what and how they are expected to behave in the session or term.
It is paramount that educators raise plagiarism awareness among learners when they are supposed to use the technology. However, “An institution can and should set high standards for their students, but it is ultimately the role of each individual self-respecting student to set their own standards of behaviour. We should be encouraging students to feel good enough about themselves that it would be a dishonour and a disservice to themselves to participate in plagiarism” (Barnes, 2004).
Bibliography
SABIEH, C. “An Elt’s Solution To Combat Plagiarism: «Birth» Of Call”
http://www.wpacouncil.org/node/9, retrieved 22/09/10
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/csc/academic-integrity/student/tutorial/plagiarism/shared-responsibilities.php, retrieved 23/09/10
http://www.tesol.org/NewsletterSite/view.asp?nid=3124, retrieved 23/09/10
This post has been written by Juan Andrés Pereira de Souza Rodriguez, Jose Luis Garcia Guzman, Laura Beatríz Nievas and Evangelina Soledad Tielli.