Accused of plagiarism, Help!!

Hi, Im in first year and just got my feedback for one of my short 500 word essays. They don’t count towards your grade, you just get feedback on them. Well one of the tutors said that the plagiarism score was 50%, and that I need to go to a meeting and talk about it. I’ve looked through the similarity report and there are only about 2 sentences that could maybe be accidentally plagiarised? The rest is just sources and quotes.
I feel so bad because I didn’t take it as seriously as I normally would as I had a lot going on at the time of writing, so was pretty overwhelmed. So I didn’t check it over properly, and I did overly rely on one source more than others (so that’s my guess as to why the percent is so high??) But I had absolutely no intention of plagiarising anything. She also said that I copied a sentence from a student’s essay from some other uni, which I DEFINITELY didn’t!
So stressed right now! Please any advice or ideas as to what to expect??

Reply 1

justlearning1469

21

Original post by Anonymous

Hi, Im in first year and just got my feedback for one of my short 500 word essays. They don’t count towards your grade, you just get feedback on them. Well one of the tutors said that the plagiarism score was 50%, and that I need to go to a meeting and talk about it. I’ve looked through the similarity report and there are only about 2 sentences that could maybe be accidentally plagiarised? The rest is just sources and quotes.
I feel so bad because I didn’t take it as seriously as I normally would as I had a lot going on at the time of writing, so was pretty overwhelmed. So I didn’t check it over properly, and I did overly rely on one source more than others (so that’s my guess as to why the percent is so high??) But I had absolutely no intention of plagiarising anything. She also said that I copied a sentence from a student’s essay from some other uni, which I DEFINITELY didn’t!
So stressed right now! Please any advice or ideas as to what to expect??

State what you know and talk about this. If it was truly an accident then say so and explain what you did

Reply 2

cheadle

17

As you are a first year and an unassessed piece of work, it sounds like this is being handled through an informal process which seems quite common across the sector these days. Think of this as an official warning and as guidance as to how to avoid a repeat of this situation in future which will almost certainly lead to a formal investigation if you do this again. The way to approach the meeting is to be upfront and listen and take on board what is said to you. From what you've said, it sounds like more of a case of poor academic practice (e.g. overreliance on one source, not checking your work before submission) BUT as you say yourself, a couple of sentences may have snuck through - you need to be on alert for these in future essays as this is often how people get caught out, usually by cutting and pasting and forgetting to run their work through Turnitin for an originality check before submission. Anything you take from a source that isn't your own must be referenced.

Accused of plagiarism, Help!!

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