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Plagiarism multiple Read Hannah Marriages Guidelines on
choice questionnaire practice profile on topical how to write a
treatments practice profile

Avoiding plagiarism: guidance

for nursing students
NS732 Price B (2014) Avoiding plagiarism: guidance for nursing students.
Nursing Standard. 28, 26, 45-51. Date of submission: November 6 2013; date of acceptance: December 9 2013.

Aims and intended learning outcomes

Abstract
The pressures of study, diversity of source materials, past assumptions
relating to good writing practice, ambiguous writing guidance on
best practice and students insecurity about their reasoning ability,
can lead to plagiarism. With the use of source checking software,
there is an increased chance that plagiarised work will be identified
and investigated, and penalties given. In extreme cases, plagiarised
work may be reported to the Nursing and Midwifery Council and
professional as well as academic penalties may apply. This article
provides information on how students can avoid plagiarism when
preparing their coursework for submission.
Author
Bob Price
Director, Postgraduate Qualifications in Advancing Healthcare
Practice, Faculty of Health & Social Care, The Open University,
Milton Keynes.
Correspondence to: altanprice@talktalk.net
Keywords
Academic writing, academic assignments, coursework, education,
nursing students, plagiarism, referencing
Review
All articles are subject to external double-blind peer review and
checked for plagiarism using automated software.
Online
Guidelines on writing for publication are available at
www.nursing-standard.co.uk. For related articles visit the archive and
search using the keywords above.
This article provides information on how
nursing students can avoid plagiarism when
preparing their coursework for submission.
It examines what constitutes plagiarism,
why plagiarism might arise and what can be
done to ensure that work submitted meets
the required writing standards. The article
is aimed at nursing students and does not
discuss preparation of work for publication,
where checks for plagiarism also occur.
The article does not discuss self-plagiarism,
where the student re-uses his or her own
work. University regulations relating to
self-plagiarism vary widely. Therefore, students
are encouraged to enquire how their place of
study defines and responds to plagiarism. After
reading this article and completing the time out
activities you should be able to:
Identify circumstances that may increase the
risk of students submitting work that has
been plagiarised.
Recognise ways of searching for and using
information that minimise the risk of
plagiarism.
Explain why using secondary source
material may increase the risk of plagiarism.
Detail how a direct quotation should be
presented in text and what is necessary
if source material is to be adequately
paraphrased.
Describe what happens in a typical
plagiarism investigation.

Introduction
There is a significant, but avoidable, risk that
nursing students may plagiarise the work of

NURSING STANDARD / RCN PUBLISHING february 26 :: vol 28 no 26 :: 2014 45

CPD professional issues
others in their academic writing, and that
investigation and penalties will ensue (Lorenz
2013). In this article, plagiarism refers to the
representation of others words in a piece of
coursework or academic assignment as ones
own, without clear reference to the source
and/or failure to present the words of others
as a quotation (in inverted commas). For the
purpose of this article, plagiarism includes
the procurement of others work, perhaps
from a student colleague, past or present, or
from a website offering completed essays, and
representing this as ones own work. While
some cases of plagiarism might be considered
to be unintentional, for example as a result
of naivety or lack of knowledge, other cases
represent an intentional attempt to deceive
the assessor and gain advantage by doing so
(Wilkinson 2009, Park et al 2013).
Both unintentional and intentional
plagiarism may result in academic penalties
because academic conduct officers are only
required to demonstrate a match between
the students work and source material,
not to prove how that match arose. Student
appeals associated with what was or was
not intended are only considered afterwards
and may include consideration of the length
of the students study experience, his or her
level of study and access to clear guidance
on best writing practice. In extreme cases,
1 Explore the way intentional plagiarism, for example using an
your university defines essay purchased from the internet, constitutes
plagiarism in study a breach of the nurses professional code of
guides for students. conduct and may be referred to the Nursing
Examine your universitys and Midwifery Council (NMC) (2011). In such
best writing practice instances, the nurse is at risk of professional
study guide to see penalty, including removal from the nursing
how much detail is register. It may be a distressing experience for
supplied about what students who discover that their work is being
should and should not investigated for plagiarism, particularly as
be done when writing penalties may influence whether the student
and submitting work passes the current module of study or completes
for assessment. What is the course (Tennant and Duggan 2008).
advised with regards to Complete time out activity 1
using information from
the internet and making Plagiarism is a recurring problem in higher
use of shared learning education (Jiang et al 2013, Lorenz 2013).
resources, such as Plagiarism prevention relies on providing
electronic forums? If at clear instructions on what represents scholarly
the end of your enquiry writing practice and guidance on how to
you have outstanding deal with a range of situations where the
queries, identify the work of others needs to be acknowledged in
designated university coursework (Betts et al 2012). It depends on
adviser with whom you a clear understanding of student needs and
should raise these issues. the diversity of backgrounds from which they
come (Ryan and Louie 2007, Adler-Collins
46 february 26 :: vol 28 no 26 :: 2014
2011). Where guidance fails and student
work causes concern, a preliminary report
is made to the academic conduct officer of
the faculty or course. The concern may be
raised by tutors, course leaders, examiners
or assessment administrators using routine
screening software such as Turnitin, which
finds matches with published material in
print or on the internet, or Copycatch, which
finds matches with other students work, past
or present. The growth of essays for sale on
internet sites increases the risk that plagiarised
work is submitted and software screening
includes review of the work available from
these sources.
Once the work is reported, the academic
conduct officer will contact the student and
present him or her with evidence of what has
been found. At this stage, no judgements are
made and the student is asked to account for
matched material presented. Students are set a
deadline by which to respond, and if no reply
is received by that date the evaluation proceeds
with the available evidence. The academic
conduct officer will then assess the evidence
before the student and either dismiss the
concern or issue an informal or formal warning
or a penalty from a tariff set by the university.
More serious cases of plagiarism may be
referred to a university disciplinary committee,
which may contact the relevant professional
body so that professional misconduct can be
investigated. Students have a right of appeal,
but must substantiate their claims about
what was not investigated correctly or not
considered adequately, and in a set time period
after the judgement letter has been issued by
the university. Where plagiarism is confirmed
and a penalty given, note of this is made in
the students record. Repeated plagiarism in
subsequent assessments may then lead to more
severe penalties.
Clear and coherent university guidance on
what constitutes plagiarism is vital, because
assessors will examine whether students can
demonstrate their reasoning and reflection
associated with others work (Ganske 2010).
If the assessor cannot confidently determine
what represents others work and what
constitutes the students own reasoning,
accurate assessment is difficult. With this in
mind, it is important for students to study
university guidance on best practice and
to complete any set study skills activities.
If Turnitin is offered as a means for
students to check their draft submission
work, then the service should be used
NURSING STANDARD / RCN PUBLISHING
regularly. A well-organised student will report
confusion in, or difficulties using, study skills
and referencing guidance before it becomes an
issue for academic conduct investigation.
Exploring the study skills guidance material
of the university is also important because it
alerts the student to assumptions of learning
that may be university or education system
specific. For example, in the UK, it is a
premise of scholarly enquiry that students
have a quizzical, even sceptical attitude
towards the claims and the writing of others.
There are no texts or teaching that are off
limits from this scrutiny and to this end,
students are expected to reference sources
clearly and adopt a critical attitude towards
all material, including that taught by academic
staff. This may come as a surprise to some
students who, in their past studies, have been
taught to approach the teaching of academic
staff differently, as something that does not
need reference or critique and that can be
presented as fact without attribution or
quotation marks (Box 1). Cortazzi and Jin
(2013) highlighted the effect of different
educational systems and cultural premises on
the way in which students approach academic
writing. Irrespective of what students have
been used to in the past, they will be required
to adhere to the conventions set by their
current university.
Complete time out activity 2
Reasons for plagiarism
Plagiarism may occur for a variety of reasons
and those summarised in this section are
not presented in order of importance or
prevalence, nor are they deemed to be more
or less reprehensible, except with regard to
intentional cheating.
One reason why plagiarism arises is
associated with the increasing diversity of
source material and its form, and confusion
about the correct ways of acknowledging
such information (Evering and Moorman
2012). Students might learn from websites,
blogs, twitter correspondence, podcasts, video
and audio material, as well as from debates
and seminars that are held on or off campus.
Students might also draw on conference
presentations and workshops.
Complete time out activity 3
One of the problems with referencing
web-based material is that it can be difficult
to identify who the author is. Also, material
NURSING STANDARD / RCN PUBLISHING
on a website may come and go quite quickly
so if there was an author, the student may
have missed the details that enable him or
her to provide a clear and accurate reference.
Course teams and/or study skills staff need to
make it clear how to proceed where authorship
is not apparent in website material. In this
situation, default guidance might be given,
for example where a document author is not
2 Study Box 1 and
provided in internet material, the student
decide whether you
should acknowledge the website owner as the
are clear about the
source and indicate author not identified. By
learning requirements
providing the most comprehensive reference
of your course of study
possible, including the internet address (URL)
and whether these
for the source, the student will have proceeded
differ from what you
in a scholarly way, helping others to trace the
understand to be normal
origin of that information.
and acceptable.
Another common cause of plagiarism is
poor note taking practice (Rettinger and
3 Conduct an internet
Kramer 2009). Students consult a source
search for websites that
and make notes from it. In some situations,
address a common illness
passages of work are written down word for
or disease that many of
word because points are explained so well.
your patients experience.
If students do not use inverted commas to
Study one or more
contain the quoted passage in their notes, there
chosen websites and
is a risk that they might later assume that this
determine who should be
was their interpretation and present the words
attributed as the author
as their own. This might be compounded
of the source material.
by a failure to make a clear record of the
Can you identify any
reference source, preventing the student from
challenges or difficulties
re-accessing the information to check whether
in this process?
material is properly attributed to the source
BOX 1
Effect of educational systems and cultural premises on approaches to
academic writing
Raymet is undertaking a post-registration course in mental health nursing in
the UK. In her previous course studies overseas, it was believed that the teacher
presented facts (learned wisdom) relating to the subject under discussion. It
was part of the learning culture not to challenge this in assignment work. In
fact, in many situations, representing the teaching of the learned person word
for word and without using quotation marks was considered meritorious.
In her current studies, however, there is a different and much more sceptical
enquiry tradition, one where the teacher encourages a critical attitude to
that which is taught. The teachers words are not exempt from this. Raymet
is challenged about some of her coursework, where she appears to have
used her teachers words without clear attribution. She is perplexed by the
challenge as she believes that she is simply presenting learned wisdom.
The academic conduct officer listens to Raymets account and checks to see
whether the university study skills website makes adequate reference to
how to acknowledge source material, particularly that relating to material
provided by academic staff. It does not, so the academic conduct officer
alerts the study skills team to this shortfall and issues Raymet with a formal
caution, explaining what is important with regard to the attribution and
referencing of material from classroom teaching. The academic conduct
officer explains to Raymet that if she uses material without clear attribution
of source again, she will be subject to a more severe penalty.
february 26 :: vol 28 no 26 :: 2014 47
CPD professional issues
and represented as a quotation. Lost references
can mean that the student preparing work
under pressure uses the words of others and
neither attributes the source nor represents
quotes correctly.
Another common cause of plagiarism is a
misunderstanding of primary and secondary
sources (Box 2). A secondary source is one that
offers a summary or commentary on what
other authors have written. Commentaries of
this kind tend to be appealing because they
4 If you were to change
often summarise quickly and clearly other
Prices (2013) words in
authors work. They reduce the learning
Box 2 to reinterpret this
effort required of a student. It is tempting for
commentary, what would
a busy student to rely on secondary source
you do to avoid
commentaries, copying words without clear
plagiarising this work?
attribution of source.
Complete time out activity 4
5 List two or three
things you could do
Plagiarism may also occur if the student,
to improve web and
panicked by difficulties studying the course
literature searching and
or pressurised by the lack of available time,
note taking activity that
intentionally seeks to deceive the examiner
might limit the risk of
by presenting the work of others in whole
plagiarism.
or in part as his or her own work, in other
BOX 2
Misused secondary sources
The following short italicised extract from Price (2013) contains primary
and secondary sources of material. The authors referenced in the passage
are primary sources: Lacovara et al (2011) and Tse et al (2012). The text
itself, a commentary on others work, is a secondary source and it too must
be properly represented using inverted commas if the text is to be used
word for word in coursework. The secondary source must be included in the
reference list of the coursework.
The education of cancer patients has never been far from the oncology
literature. There is a long-standing tradition of writing about education that
enables patients to make an informed decision about how to live their lives
after diagnosis (Lacovara et al 2011). A great deal of the literature focuses
on educating patients to manage symptoms, especially pain (Tse et al 2012),
with much of it focusing on complex patient education programmes.
The correct way to present the above text word for word in an assessed
piece of work, is:
The education of cancer patients has never been far from the oncology
literature. There is a long-standing tradition of writing about education that
enables patients to make an informed decision about how to live their lives
after diagnosis (Lacovara et al 2011). A great deal of the literature focuses on
educating patients to manage symptoms, especially pain (Tse et al 2012), with
much of it focusing on complex patient education programmes (Price 2013).
Note that the whole passage appears in inverted commas and the source,
Price (2013), is added in brackets at the end. It is not enough that the
primary source material is represented by references. The student has not
necessarily read those, relying instead on Prices commentary. To represent
the above passage without clear reference to Price and the use of inverted
commas, is to plagiarise the work and gain advantage for what the student
has not personally reasoned.
48 february 26 :: vol 28 no 26 :: 2014
words cheating. Cheating is widely reported
(Wilkinson 2009), and there is an increased
risk of this where students do not discuss their
study concerns with a tutor, where they fall
behind schedule in their studies or where they
are concerned with securing a qualification
with a minimum amount of effort. Some
students may ask fellow students to share their
essays, or may buy essays from the internet or
auction sites and present these as their own.
In some instances, more accomplished and
unscrupulous scholars have been persuaded
to write essays on the students behalf. Any
person who assists the student to cheat in this
way is guilty of collusion and may be open to
professional discipline.
Searching and note taking
To limit the risk of plagiarism, there is a need
to study in a well-organised and diligent way.
Literature searches and preparation must be
done well if the course assignment or essay is
not to include plagiarised material. Part-time
students, in particular, need to assess their study
capacity carefully and should be especially
cautious about studying more than one course
at a time. Being over-optimistic about study
capacity can lead to plagiarism. The more time
the student has allocated to searching and note
taking activity, the less risk there is that panic
will ensue and plagiarised essays will result.
Complete time out activity 5
One of the greatest risks of plagiarism arises
when source material and notes become
separated in some way. This is a common
problem with regard to internet material,
where it is difficult to download and print
source material that captures exactly what
interested the student. However, it can also
be problematic if a student has read a lot of
articles or textbooks and becomes confused
about what information was found where. A
good way to minimise the problem of source
and note separation is to print or photocopy
the seminal source articles and to staple the
pages of notes to the original source copy. It
is important that the student ensures that the
source material provides clear reference details,
often at the foot of the page. Using photocopies
in this way can be expensive and copyright
issues might limit what can be taken as part of
private study from any one issue of a journal,
however this should be less of a problem when
students realise the need to be critical about
which sources are relevant to their work.
NURSING STANDARD / RCN PUBLISHING
 It is often better to reference fewer articles
or books, and instead select the best and most
appropriate source material. Where material
is taken from the internet, a forum or wiki,
the fullest possible source details need to be
recorded on the same page as the notes so that
the two match up. This needs to include the
title and author, the organisation that runs the
website, the URL and the date it was accessed.
If a forum or wiki was the source, then the titles
of these need to be recorded, together with that
of the selected post, which is a short passage
of text contributed by the author in relation to
the debate or conversation. The date the post is
uploaded should also be recorded. Forums and
wikis may be located on websites, so the names
and URLs of these should be recorded.
Another useful strategy is to use a different
coloured pen to write down any quotations
taken from the original source. It is important
that students add the page number, author
and date of publication at the end. To identify
what the student thinks about the source
material, it may help to present critique
in thought bubbles or perhaps boxes. In
assignments, the examiner will often want to
see evidence of the students reasoning process
to understand what has been reflected on or
debated by the student.
Once the commentary and source material
have been matched and secured together,
the information needs to be filed. It is a
good idea to file together all resources
relating to a particular assignment. Better
organisation leads to less anxiety when the
work has to be written.
Using quotations and paraphrasing
correctly
In Box 2, an example was given of how
to represent a quote in assessed work.
University rules differ in relation to whether
the inverted commas are single or double,
but the important point is that they are used
consistently when quoting others work. It
is often argued that it is a scholarly skill to
use quotes in assessed work and that holds
true in research where participants quotes
are interspersed in the text. However, using
large numbers of quotes in other forms of
academic writing may not be appropriate.
After all, the examiner wishes to know what
the student thinks and the selection and
presentation of quotes from others says more
about the students discrimination of what
seemed significant, rather than what he or
NURSING STANDARD / RCN PUBLISHING
she deduces. For that reason, subject to the
set requirements of assessment, it is worth
debating whether quotes are needed at all.
Long passages of quoted material will leave
little room for the student to demonstrate
his or her own reasoning. It is often better to
paraphrase other authors work because the
student can include his or her observations
and reflections (Box 3).
Paraphrasing involves taking the main
points that the original author made and
representing these in the students own words.
It sounds easy, but it is in fact rather difficult.
Students are naturally anxious not to stray
too far from the original arguments of the
author, believing as they do that these are
authoritative. However, paraphrasing is not
done by simply removing or changing a few
words. Version 1 in Box 3 is to a large extent
Prices (2013) own work. It is insufficiently
changed and could be considered plagiarism.
Version 2 is better. If a word match, line
by line, was completed, the matches would
be fewer and there has been an attempt on
the part of the student to use his or her own
words. Version 3 is the best example of
paraphrasing because it still acknowledges the
BOX 3
Three examples of paraphrasing the work of another author
Below is the original text presented in Box 2. Three possible paraphrased
versions follow, one of which is insufficient to avoid plagiarism.
The education of cancer patients has never been far from the oncology
literature. There is a long-standing tradition of writing about education that
enables patients to make an informed decision about how to live their lives
after diagnosis (Lacovara et al 2011). A great deal of the literature focuses
on educating patients to manage symptoms, especially pain (Tse et al 2012),
with much of it focusing on complex patient education programmes.
Version 1
The education of cancer patients has never been far from us. We have
a tradition of writing about education that enables patients to make an
informed decision about cancer post diagnosis (Lacovara et al 2011). A great
deal of the literature focuses on educating patients to manage symptoms,
especially pain (Tse et al 2012).
Version 2
Its arguable that cancer nurses have always been interested in educating
their patients, and especially with regards to making good decisions about
living with cancer (for example, Lacovara et al 2011). There has been a lot of
attention given to helping patients manage their symptoms (for example, Tse
et al 2012).
Version 3
Price (2013) commented on just how engaged cancer nurses are in educating
patients post diagnosis, citing the work of Lacovara et al (2011). He noted that
Tse et al (2012) observed that much of that education centres on symptom
management, for example pain. The issue then is what does education mean in
this context? Is it enough to advise patients, to suggest what they could do in
order to claim that we have educated them?
february 26 :: vol 28 no 26 :: 2014 49
CPD professional issues
Journal
Club
#NursingJC
Join a discussion on Twitter
about this article
on Friday March 7
Using #NursingJC
6 Select a passage
from one of the articles
in this issue of Nursing
Standard and write it
out verbatim. Now make
the same points as the
original author did, but
using your own words.
Show the result to a
colleague to establish
if he or she thinks you
have developed an
original piece of writing.
As you think about this
exercise, determine
what you did. Did you
first ascertain what
the original author said,
perhaps in just one
or two lines? Did you
then prepare lines that
captured that, but which
added your perspective?
If you simply changed
some words around, was
your colleague confident
that your piece was
sufficiently different
from the original?
50 february 26 :: vol 28 no 26 :: 2014
source of the original commentary, uses the
students own words, discusses Prices (2013)
findings, and adds some questions at the end,
which are the students ideas.
Complete time out activity 6
Poor paraphrasing can be identified using
software such as Turnitin. The software does
not judge whether the work is paraphrased
adequately, it simply highlights the close
matches. Academic conduct officers then
assess whether the paraphrasing is adequately
different to the original. This is not done by
counting the percentage of matched words and
their locations, but by ascertaining whether
the student has demonstrated an additional
perspective to that originally found. It is for
this reason that version 3 in Box 3 is likely
to be considered good paraphrasing of the
original work.
Judicious use of shared information
There is a good chance in coursework that
students will need to refer to shared project
work at some point. The project work may
have taken the form of seminar material, a
debate, a wiki or a group presentation. What
is important in discussing these sources is that
the original contributors are acknowledged
and that co-owned work resulting from the
project is clearly defined. There needs to be
a clear separation between what the group
discovered or did and what the student now
thinks about that discovery.
Below are two examples of text that show
clear attribution of source material and identify
the students or any new commentary:
Our tutor group forum (September 11 2013)
discussed the ethics of entering patients into
drug trials and made a series of points about
the need to advance research and still respect
the rights of individual patients. Colleagues
debated patient motives for agreeing to
become research participants, whether that
was to benefit others or to please the nurse
who had asked them to assist. Subsequently,
I have carried that debate further and
considered whether patients can give
truly informed consent to participate in a
research study unless they have a thorough
understanding of all the procedures and
what the possible consequences might be.
Our wiki consisted of a series of posts,
illustrating where healthcare policies
competed with one another and made it
more difficult for the nurse to prioritise
his or her work. Sian used the example of
individualised care and the targets set by
the trust for moving patients through acute
care (September 2013 group wiki). Amal
identified policies on the prevention of cross
infection and the importance of lay carer
psychological support in hospital (September
2013 group wiki). My colleagues posts
illustrate that leadership cannot be limited to
directing staff to policies, but must help them
manage the resulting conundrums.
In the first of these two examples, the first
half of the paragraph is about attributing
source, recognising what the group has done.
It is after the word subsequently that the
student claims his or her own contribution,
drawing certain inferences from the work
done. In this case, it is about what is really
possible regarding informed consent. In
the second example, the contributions of
Sian and Amal are acknowledged as the
authors of the source material. It is in the last
sentence that the student adds his or her own
deduction, this time about the implications
for leadership. The main point to remember is
that examiners need to understand what was
sourced elsewhere and what the student has
subsequently added.
Responding to a plagiarism investigation
In the event that the student is challenged to
explain a piece of his or her work, examining
the matches found with other sources, it is
important not to panic and to set aside time
to examine carefully the concerns expressed
by the academic conduct officer. While it is
natural to feel shocked, alarmed or angry
by possible investigation, it is important to
remember that this is an enquiry. Nothing
has been judged. Academic conduct officers
can and do dismiss plagiarism concerns
expressed by others, they try to understand
the circumstances of a case and they have at
their disposal a range of penalties, the majority
of which need not compromise a students
reputation. It is important to learn from this
enquiry process and any mistakes that the
student may have made.
Frequently, students believe that the enquiry
centres almost exclusively on student intent
whether he or she deliberately sought to
deceive. Students sometimes explain that
their error was brought about by a lack of
understanding of what was required. They
report that they never intended to deceive.
In practice, it is sometimes difficult for the
NURSING STANDARD / RCN PUBLISHING
academic conduct officer to deduce intent
from students work, except in situations
where a piece of work has been secured from
an essay selling website. The investigation
centres on three factors. First, whether there
is confirmed evidence of plagiarism (clearly
matched sources without attribution and/or
proper representation of quotes) the students
response might demonstrate that a source
used was legitimately, if unconventionally,
referenced. Second, whether reasonable study
skills advice was available to the student. If the
student has been provided with clear guidance
that is accessible, then it is reasonable to expect
that the student used this as part of his or her
studies. Third, whether there are any individual
circumstances that might mitigate plagiarism.
This third factor is not a get out clause as
contravention of the student discipline code
may still be confirmed, however the penalty
might be attenuated.
Academic conduct officers will respond
to honesty and insight shown by the student
during the investigation process. Simply
refuting a concern when there is clear evidence
of plagiarism may suggest that the student
disputes the academic standards expected of
him or her. If the student indicates how and
why he or she believes that plagiarism has
occurred and accepts the error in whole or in
part, then such insight and contrition may be
taken into account. Academic conduct officers
not only make judgements on cases, they also
recommend remedial study skills advice and
help, which will benefit students and tutors
in the future. The purpose of plagiarism
investigations is not simply to police education,
it is to correct and improve future writing
practice. Therefore, students are advised
to give careful attention to concerns raised,
to study the evidence provided, to reflect on
assignments and if mistakes were made, to
share what they now understand.
Complete time out activity 7
Conclusion
Plagiarism investigations can be avoided by 7 In most cases,
careful preparation, attention to detail and academic conduct
studying in a well-organised way. Good note investigation of
taking, sensible filing of source and notes plagiarism is not a
together, and appreciation of primary and criminal or professional
secondary sources of material can help to conduct matter. It is an
minimise the risk of plagiarism. Understanding investigation of mistakes,
how to paraphrase appropriately is time error, and in some cases,
well spent at the start of the course, as is an attempt to produce
familiarisation with the universitys study work on schedule.
skills resources. However, where a plagiarism Explain why honesty may
investigation does ensue, and provided that be the best approach
there has not been a concerted effort to cheat, when responding to the
correspondence with the academic conduct concerns of the academic
officer needs to be understood in proportionate conduct officer.
terms. He or she is not judging the moral
character of the student, but investigating 8 Now that you have
possible shortfalls in writing practice. While completed the article,
marks may be lost and a record made of such you might like to write
shortfalls, provided that the episode is learned a practice profile.
from, in most cases, academic writing is Guidelines to help you
improved by the experience NS are on page 54.
Complete time out activity 8

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