TASK 9: Plagiarism
The origin of the word 'plagiarism' is a Latin word meaning 'a thief'. Plagiarism is a type of academic theft, in which ideas and/or language are stolen from someone else. In its most obvious form, plagiarism involves the word-for-word copying of large sections of another person's material with no indication of the original source. Because of the lack of in-text reference, the plagiarist is claiming the ideas and language as his or her own.
In a less extreme form, the plagiarist copies shorter phrases from a source and links these together with his or her own words. This is also plagiarism if there is no in-text reference to show that the ideas come from another source or if there are no quotation marks around shorter quotations to show that the words belong to someone else. In scientific subjects, plagiarism could also be copying another person's results, calculations or program code, perhaps with minor changes in accuracy, explanation, layout or identifiers.
Remember: plagiarism is a form of cheating and is liable to punishment. Based on the text above discuss your answers to the following questions:
a) What is the difference between plagiarism and acceptable reference to other sources?
b) Why do tutors take plagiarism so seriously?
c) Has the Internet made plagiarism easier?
d) Is plagiarism a problem just for non-native speaker students?
e) What might the penalty be if you plagiarise a piece of assessed work?