Posts
Some of you have heard me talk about plagiarism before. Few things anger or distress me as much as a student who doesn't put the work into her speech or paper. One of the colleges where I teach doesn't have a firm policy about plagiarism, they leave it up to the instructor, so my policy has become that anyone caught plagiarizing gets a 0 for the assignment, period.
In my Speech class, I always spend part of a lecture, early in the semester, discussing exactly what plagiarism is and warning them against it. I give them handouts. I tell them, "I always know." And I do. This isn't because I'm brilliant, it's because they're stupid. If I can google some part of your speech and it comes up, then you've plagiarized it. Duh. I have access to more sophisticated programs, such as turnitin.com, articlechecker.com, and copyscape, but I don't need them. The Google and Yahoo serach engines work just fine.
We Speech teachers got a memo from the head of our department, in which she said that plagiarism was more of a problem this last semester than she had ever seen. She says that some students seem really not to know that cutting and pasting a paragraph here, a paragraph there, and then presenting it as your speech, is actually plagiarism.
My first instinct is to ask, "How do you get to college and not know that's plagiarism?" But, believe me, you'd be shocked at what students get to college not knowing. At least in my class, I KNOW I've told them exactly what plagiarism is--something I don't have to do--so they have no excuses.
This past semester I failed two students for plagiarizing on their final speeches. They're never even smart about it, either. One student copied wholesale a speech from a site called something like InformativeSpeeches.Com, and the other, who did a speech on cancer, copied hers entirely from Cancer.net--though she did cut and paste different paragraphs from different pages on the site. And it's very common for them to copy things directly from Wikipedia.
So, here's some advice for you if you ever have to take a Speech class. If you can't pronounce the words you use in your speech, your teacher will know you didn't come up with them. If you seem bored by your own topic, the teacher will know you didn't come up with your information. If you can't communicate coherently in daily conversation, but your speech suddenly sounds like a Nobel Prize winner wrote it, the teacher will know it's because a Nobel Prize winner wrote it, not you.
Teachers aren't stupid. And plagiarism is more than just lazy; it's dishonest and dishonorable. So...classes start in 12 days, and I guess I'll just have to continue to wage my own personal war against it. I kind of feel bad for my new students, because it always ends up that each new class pays for the sins of the one that came before.
Yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. --John Adams
Some good sites
About Me
- Katherine C. Teel
- I am 40, a teacher and a professional writer. I am married to the love of my life and have 3 excellent babies.
6 comments:
You know, my Comp professor AND my Speech professor both went out of their way to describe in detail what constitutes plagiarism in an effort to help their students avoid it. Like some of your students, I didn't really know that it could be more than just copy/paste; you really do have to be careful. It is of course possible to plagiarize and not know it because it's never been spelled out for you. Some people think, "Hey, I wrote this, I didn't just copy it out of a book," but they may not realize that even forgetting to reference a citation or quotation is plagiarism. Most students have no intention of plagiarizing but mistakenly do it anyway, and most would avoid it if they knew exactly what constitutes it.
Anyway, I want to let you know that while you'll probably always have to fail at least one moron who thinks he's smarter than you, your speech at the beginning of every semester will not be lost on everyone. In fact, it may make some of them better writers or help one of them realize that she's been inadvertently plagiarizing. The bottom line, Kat, is that the ones you have a problem with are the ones that are going to do it anyway; the ones who know full well what they're doing. You can't do anything about those people. Keep giving your beginning-of-the-semester speech because it's important, and it will help clear your conscience at the end of the semester when you have to fail someone for being an idiot. You can't do anything more to make these people less idiotic. So don't stress over them too much. I know it's frustrating and disappointing, especially as a writer, that someone would deliberately steal someone else's work and claim it as their own just because they're too lazy to put the work into it. All you can do is give them big fat zeros, which you do, and hopefully they'll remember that in future classes.
This isn't because I'm brilliant, it's because they're stupid.
LOL! Hear, hear. I see the potential for a hilarious "Top 10" list in this..."Top 10 Reasons I Know You're a Plagiarizing Cheater" or something like that.
You are doing the right thing by taking the plagiarism policy into your own hands and letting your students know about it upfront. Plagiarism makes me mad (and sad, because like you said, so many students are getting to college with subpar educations).
Thinking back to my own speech class, it'd probably help them to know that speeches tend to be much easier when you've written the stuff yourself - your own voice, your own style, etc. Of course, for some, that wouldn't matter. They don't care. They just want to throw something out there, get a grade, and be done with it. :(
You are both right, and I appreciate your thoughts. I have certainly had students who didn't realize they were plagiarizing, which is why I instituted the lecture at the beginning of the semester. At least now they can't say they didn't know. And, like Annie said, I can fail them with a clear conscience, because I've done everything I can do to show them not only what not to do, but how to do it better.
Preach it, girlfriend!
I am hyper aware of this, to the point that when I found a teaching page from UT/Austin relating to my Old Norse final project, I sent the link to the professor to approve it before I'd use it. And it was just a glossary, essentially! Academic honesty... can't do without it. Especially at the graduate level. Lose your reputation and you might as well go dig ditches.
And then there's what Art teachers have to deal with: I do a demo for a project in front of the class and, I swear to God, somebody will take it from me and try to pass it off as their own. It doesn't happen all the time, but it happens every once in a while.
I also give them sketchbooks to keep. I've had students who hate Art, hate drawing, and never crack it open. Lo and behold, they turn their books in at grading time and they're suddenly Vincent Van Gogh.
My favorite times of the school year is when it's time to enter grades.
"An F?? I show up to class every day?? How could I get an F??"
LOL, Mark, I have had that exact question! "Why did I get an F on this paper?" I never thought about it applying to art students, though. Interesting...
Post a Comment