PLAGIARISM IN ACADEMIC WRITING
Plagiarism can be defined as the act of taking and using another person’s own thoughts, writing or inventions of another. It is important for students to avoid plagiarising the work of others in academics.
The following types of plagiarism should be avoided:
• Verbatim copying of more than 10 per cent of another persons work without acknowledgement, references or the use of quotation marks.
• Improper paraphrasing of another person’s work where more than one sentence within a paragraph or section of text has been rearranged without proper attribution. Significant improper paraphrasing without appropriate is treated as seriously as verbatim copying.
• Re-using parts of a person’s for example a figure, table or paragraph without attribution
• Self plagiarism
• Republication of original work
WRITING PLAGIARISM FREE PAPERS
It is important to avoid plagiarizing other peoples written work as this improves even the quality of your own written work. Plagiarised work indicates that the student is fairly weak and as opted to copy from other sources. This is an indication that the student did not understand or has not thought about the material enough to be able to produce it in his/her own words. In any assignment the learner has to convince the lecturer that they understood and have critically analyzed the concepts involved. This attracts higher marks.
To demonstrate understanding, one has to read a section of the book or a journal article; reflect for a moment on what the author means by it; decide which are the most important points she has made; and write a sentence or two explaining those points, mentioning the name of the original author. In the final essay you may want to contrast the ideas of several authors and add your own evaluation and analysis. Use good vocabulary, proper phrasing, and consistent punctuation in order to form well constructed sentences. In addition structure your arguments well.
In some cases you will...
