Plagarism

Plagarism
Plagiarism is taking another person's words or ideas and using them as if they were your own. It can be
either deliberate or accidental. Plagiarism is taken very seriously in the CET online. If even a small
section of your work is found to have been plagiarized, it is likely that you will be assigned a mark of '0'
for that assignment. In more serious cases, it may be necessary for you to repeat the module completely.
Please note that all of your work is checked for plagiarism using especially designed software. Please
make sure that you have clearly given credit to any words or ideas that are not your own.
Hamp-Lyons & Courter (1984, pp. 161-166) distinguish between four types of plagiarism:
o outright copying
o paraphrase plagiarism
o patchwork plagiarism
o stealing an apt term
Outright copying is when a student uses exactly the same words as the original author without using
quotation marks or saying where the words are from.
Paraphrase plagiarism is changing some of the words and grammar but leaving most of the original text
the same.
Patchwork plagiarism is when parts of the original author's words are used and connected together in a
different way.
Stealing an apt term is when a short phrase from the original text has been used in the students work,
possibly because it is so good.
Exercise:
Indentify the type of plagiarism in the following text:
Original
Text
You have to tread quite a fine line between being
accused, on the one hand, of not making enough use
of the writers you have been reading on the course,
and, on the other, of having followed them too
slavishly, to the point of plagiarizing them. One of
your early tasks as a student is to get a feel for how
to strike the right balance.
(Northedge, 1990, p. 190)
Student's
text
You have to tread quite a fine line between being
accused, on the one hand, of not making enough use
of the writers you have been reading on the course,
and, on the other, of having followed them too
slavishly, to the point of plagiarizing them. One of
your early tasks as a student is to get a feel for how
to strike the right balance.
paraphrase plagiarism
patchwork plagiarism
stealing an apt term
outright copying

-tivity 2.4: Research Skills
You have 20 minute(s) to finish the lesson.
Developing research skills is perhaps one of the most difficult skills to develop and one of the most
important for life-long learning.
Developing research skills help students answer questions like these:
o What is an academic article?
o What is considered a primary resource in this discipline?
o How can I thoroughly search the academic literature on my subject?
o How do I evaluate a resource's appropriateness for this assignment?
o What sort of information is most appropriate for answering my
question/questions?
We live in the Information age, where many people have access to the Internet and to thousands of
resources almost instantaneously. Many people believe that with all those resources available there is no
need to go to the library because they can do all their research online. That is not true; the Internet is not
a substitute for the library. The Internet it is a tool best used in addition to traditional research sources.
However, when a library is not available, the Internet is a very useful resource.
The World Wide Web offers a great wealth of information. This makes it a potentially great place to
accomplish research on many subjects, however it is important to develop skills to evaluate the credibility
of what you find.
The following are some questions that can help you to look at Web pages critically:
1. Is there an author of the work? If so, is the author clearly identified?
2. Are the author's credentials for writing on this topic stated?
3. Does the site or page represent a group, organization, institution, corporation
or government body?
4. Is there a link back to the organization's page or a way to contact the
organization or the author to verify the credibility of the site (address, phone
number, email address)?
5. Can factual information be verified through footnotes or bibliographies to
other credible sources?
6. Based on what you already know about the subject, or have checked from
other sources, does this information seem credible?
7. If statistical data is presented in graphs or charts is it labeled clearly?
8. Is there a date stating when the document was originally created?
9. Are there any indications that the material is updated frequently or
consistently to ensure currency of the content?
10. If there are links to other Web pages are they current?