Plagarizing

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Home : 2004 : July : 22

Plagarizing
By Trish

I agree with other posters. This problem has become increasingly worse. I explain to my students that plagarzing results in a score of zero.

My problem is the parents. I work in a fairly affluent school district, and
one of my classes is an advancec creative writing class where most students are good writers. However, some of them copied and pasted from websites. Parents literally would not believe me when I told them their student received a grade of a zero. In all six cases (yes, six this year!), I had to print out the website, compare it with the students' papers, and highlight the identical

wording (in one case, there was very little white space left). This is not a case of not having time to do the assignment; the students had time to work on this in class so very little needed to be done at home. This was a case of taking the easy way out. I know that, as teachers, we are not in the business of discouraging students in general. However, I think there needs to be a rethinking of this rule when the student did not turn in his or her own work. In that case, they do need to be discouraged from turning in plagarism. I don't feel sorry for them in this instance.