Helping Students Avoid Plagiarism

Although instructors frequently warn students not to plagiarize essays, issuing dire warnings about failing grades or even expulsion, plagiarism continues to be a problem. For many of us, plagiarism is a highly emotional issue. When we discuss it with our students, we often speak in outraged terms of cheating, theft, and dishonesty. For some reason, a suspected instance of plagiarism can transform a caring, reflective teacher into an academic cop, judge, jury, and executioner. Even though there always will be dis honest students, most cases of plagia rism result from honest confusion over the standards of academic discourse and proper citation. We might more successfully combat the problem by spending more time in class helping students learn how to avoid it. Plagiarism remains a constant prob lem, in part, because it encompasses such a wide variety of errors in aca demic writing. In fact, plagiarism can be a difficult term to define for stu dents. Consider for a moment the fol lowing acts that we include under the general heading of plagiarism: Buying a paper from a research serv ice or term paper mill. Advertisements for companies selling term papers ap