Studying in the US: How to Avoid Being Accused of Plagiarism

We explain this intellectual offense in week 30 of our Foreign Student Series. Transcript of radio broadcast:
15 April 2009

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

Plagiarism is the act of representing another person's words or ideas as your own.
The offense may be as small as a sentence copied from a book. Or it may be as
extensive as a whole paper copied -- or bought -- from somebody else.

Intellectual dishonesty is nothing new. The only difference now is that the Internet
has made it much simpler to steal other people's work. Yet the same technology
that makes it easy to find information to copy also makes it easier to identify
plagiarism.

Teachers can use online services that compare papers to thousands of others to
search for copied work. The teacher gets a report on any passages that are similar
enough to suspect plagiarism. These services are widely used. Turnitin.com, for
example, says it is used in more than one hundred countries and examines more
than one hundred thirty thousand papers a day.

Professional writers who plagiarize can be taken to civil court and ordered to pay
damages. In schools, the punishment for cheating could be a failing grade on the
paper or in the course. Some schools expel plagiarists for a term; others, for a full
academic year. Some degrees have even been withdrawn after a school later
found that a student had plagiarized.

Accidental plagiarism can sometimes result from cultural differences.

At Indiana University in Bloomington, sixty percent of students who use the Office
of Writing Tutorial Services are non-native English speakers. The director, Joanne
Vogt, says some have no idea that copying from published works is considered
wrong. She says students from China, for example, may think they are insulting
readers if they credit other sources. They believe that educated readers should
already know where the information came from.

The more you give credit, the less you risk accusations of plagiarism. Any
sentences taken directly from a source should appear inside quotation marks. And
even if you put those sentences into your own words, you should still give credit to
where you got the information.

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach.
More about plagiarism next week. We will also discuss other rules for academic
writing in the United States. Earlier reports in our Foreign Student Series are at
voaspecialenglish.com -- along with links to some writing resources at American
universities. I'm Steve Ember.