Makaylah Minter

Avoiding Plagiarism Workshop

March 8, 2021

Kalacheck (2009) created a second role-play scenario to demonstrate plagiarism and it

states: “A student who works very hard to get good grades is working on a writing assignment.
Most of the assignment is in the student’s own words, but he or she finds a few very interesting
sentences on a website. The information fits right in with the student’s writing and seems to
improve the quality of the writing. It is unlikely that the teacher will ever visit the website source.
The student adds the sentences and turns in the assignment.” My assigned question from Kalacheck
(2009) is “ What could the student have done to avoid this situation?”
What the student did is, in fact, considered plagiarizing because they copied information
exactly from another website, therefore stealing the idea of someone else. The students believes
that the sentences they found fit right in with their writing, but that does not justify stealing the
idea. There are many things that could have been done to avoid this situation. The student could
have simply quoted the sentences that they found if they could not say it any better or clearer in
their own words. Quoting would allow for them to use the exact wording without violating the
plagiarism rules. Like Cantwell (2019) stated in the “Avoiding Plagiarism” video, they could do this
by finding the author, year of publication (if it is in APA format), and page number(s) on the website
and inserting it in parenthesis after the quote or in a phrase before the quote. This would give credit
to the source.
Another way that the student could have avoided this situation is by paraphrasing the
sentences from the website. Instead of copying word-for-word the student could think of a way to
say it differently in a way that it is more concise, clearer, or more proper. It is very tempting to want
to use sentences that seem to improve the quality of the writing, but it is a violation of the
plagiarism rules. The student should paraphrase by thinking of another way to say what the author
of the website was saying in their own words. Cantwell (2019) says that quotation marks and page
numbers are not needed for paraphrasing, however the author and year of publication are still
necessary. Doing this will give recognition to the source while also putting your own perspective on
it.
The last way that the student could have avoided this situation is not putting the statements
at all. It is wrong to assume that the teacher will never visit the website that they received the
information from. There is technology that teachers can use to detect plagiarism. The student
works hard to get good grades and should continue to instead of stealing someone else’s idea. They
should spend more time on improving the quality of the writing that they already wrote in their
own words. If they are unable to make their writing better, then they should settle for the grade
that they are going to get, have a tutor read it and make suggestions, quote the statements, or
paraphrase the statements.
 References

Cantwell, T. (2019). Avoiding Plagiarism. Mercer University Academic Resource Center. Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCV99Mze2PI

Kalacheck, C. (2009). Preventing Plagiarism, teacher’s guide. McDonald Publishing Co.