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Identifying Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a serious and common issue that has always been ongoing in schools across any part of the world. It involves the practice of taking someone’s work and passing it off as their own. Whether it’s copying someone’s answers during an examination or handing in work off of the internet or a peer with no credit, plagiarism always has more disadvantages than advantages. There are several reasons to this: the guilty does not actually learn anything by copying someone’s work, the victim does not get any credit for their work, and the consequences are just not worth it.

When looking at Katrina’s essay passage, it is evident that she used Holman’s work and passed it off as her own common knowledge. For example, Katrina replaced “written in the period following the Norman Conquest and preceding the Modern English period beginning at the Renaissance” with, “used in the time period after the Norman Conquest and coming before the Modern English age that begins with the Renaissance.” All Katrina did was paraphrase a few words such as ‘following’ with ‘after’, and ‘preceding’ with ‘before’. Her passage is obviously plagiarized from start to finish. To add more to the evidence, the order of Katrina’s information is the same as the order of Holman’s definition, as in they both start with talking about the time period, then the actual dates, and then an example of a Modern English piece.

I believe that Katrina did indeed plagiarize this passage in her essay. Not only is this information not common knowledge, but also the similarities between the texts are too evident.  The Bedford Handbook defines plagiarism as “failing to cite quotations and borrowed ideas” (570). According to this definition, Katrina is plagiarizing Holman’s work as she did not cite her borrowed ideas, but instead passed Holman’s ideas as common knowledge.

The consequences of plagiarism are never worth it. Using the article referred by Desire 2 Learn in the Assignment 3 Content, we can clearly see how dangerous it is to plagiarize. The article is about a Medical School Dean at the University of Alberta who plagiarized his speech. According to the article, in his speech, he talked about a lot of inspirational ideas and his “never-ending quest for knowledge” (Boesveld). Only a few students at the university recognized that his speech is from somewhere else, and soon enough it was found that the speech was plagiarized from a world-renown surgeon named Atul Gawande. When officials found out, Dr. Baker (the dean who plagiarized the speech) resigned from his position as dean and had to take a four-month administrative leave. As you can see, plagiarism has major consequences and it is never worth it.

If I were to be Katrina’s teacher, I would most definitely confront her about her plagiarism of Holman’s work. I would not give her a zero on the assignment right away, but I would give her another chance at writing her own work that I would mark fairly without deductions. If she were to refuse, then I would assign a mark of zero. I would also help her understand that Holman’s passage is not common knowledge. I believe it’s essential for everybody to do their own work. If students (or anyone) were to get away with plagiarizing, it would be unpleasant for them in the future as they would eventually be exposed. They would never learn how to produce their own work which could drastically affect how their future plays out.
Works Cited:
Hacker, Diana. The Bedford Handbook. 5 th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's. 1998.

Boesveld, Sarah. "University of Alberta Medical School Dean Resigns after Plagiarizing Speech." National Post. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2017.

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