Plagiarism in School Work

Could anyone give me a good run down explanation of how plagiarism is defined in regards to school work, and the best ways to avoid it (unintentionally) ?

Reply 1

Arturo09

Original post by Mister.K

Could anyone give me a good run down explanation of how plagiarism is defined in regards to school work, and the best ways to avoid it (unintentionally) ?

I guess this mostly or completely applies to coursework, but it depends what type of coursework and the subjects you are doing.

In our Applied Science classes, the majority of our assessment is based on coursework, and therefore a lot of time is spent online or researching for suitable sources to help us. Going from I know, plagiarism consists of using research or sources that are not of your own, and therefore using material of someone else or someone else's content. To avoid plagiarism, you should site or reference EVERYTHING you intend to use as a source, so this includes web addresses, book titles including the author, telephone numbers etc. You should state clearly in your work all the sources that you used, as this shows where you have taken or interpreted information from clearly. Yes, you can use other peoples research, but you cannot copy and paste sentences, or large chunks of information, and just site it afterwards, that is NOT allowed. You should read what you are researching carefully, and then interpret it and put it into YOUR OWN words, then site it. The likely hood is, your teacher will find words you don't even know how to spell, let alone know the meaning of, and then your in real trouble. Even worse, the examiners will be browsing the web looking at the obvious sites for relevant information, as well as your citations, and they will see whether you have a clear understanding or not.

To conclude, DON'T copy and paste
but DO read other sources and put IT INTO YOUR OWN WORDS..
BE SURE TO SITE EVERYTHING!!!!

Best of luck :biggrin: