PLAGIARISM

Plagiarism can be defined simply as using someone else’s ideas and words in your writing or
speech without giving the credit to the owner of the ideas or the words. Two of the main reasons
why students should avoid plagiarism are showing that they have consulted sources by experts in
the field they are writing about and showing that they are able to explain those ideas in their own
words [ CITATION Bai11 \l 1033 ].

Task: Plagiarism is not easy to define, and there are cases which you might think are not
plagiarism, but they actually are. To test your understanding of plagiarism, complete the
following table from Bailey (2011). You need to write whether each case is considered
plagiarism or not.

Situation Yes/No

1 Copying a paragraph, but changing a few words and giving a citation. Yes

2 Cutting and pasting a short article from a website, with no citation. YES

3 Taking two paragraphs from a classmate’s essay, without citation. YES

4 Taking a graph from a textbook, giving the source. NO

Taking a quotation from a source, giving a citation but not using

5 YES
quotation marks.

Using something that you think of as general or common knowledge,

6 NO
e.g. large areas of rainforest have been cut down in recent years.

Using a paragraph from an essay you wrote and had marked the
7 YES
previous semester, without citation.

Using the results of your own research, e.g. from a survey, without
8 YES
citation.

Discussing an essay topic with a group of classmates using some of

9 YES
their ideas in your own work.

Giving a citation for some information but misspelling the author’s

10 YES
name.

!!!For further details, refer to the MLP Plagiarism Policy!!!