Plagiarism is one of those subjects in which I believe every teacher should teach their students starting in middle school. Based on my personal experience, I was not taught the rules of plagiarism until I was in college. I had some plagiarism things taught to me during my senior year in high school but that was not enough for me to fully grasp exactly what is plagiarism. In my opinion, that is unacceptable. The reason I say that is because due to the advancement of technology students are unaware that everything that is on the World Wide Web is not free. The sad thing about students knowing the rules of plagiarism is that they do not know the rules of plagiarism. We are losing too many students from universities because of plagiarism.
Like me coming up in high school I thought all you had to do was add quotation marks around a statement when someone is speaking and that was giving credit to that person. I was not aware of bibliographies and the fact I have to add page numbers as to where a quote came from in a book. It is our job as teachers to guide students in the right direction of exactly how to properly source information. As a future teacher, I will give a lecture on plagiarism in the beginning of the quarter for all my students. I will also place the rules of plagiarism on a poster in my class so that way students are reassured of the rules. We, as teachers, need to learn how show students how to avoid plagiarism instead of dismissing them from universities for something they have not been taught.
I find it sad, as well, that you went through most of high school without be taught the proper way to cite a source in research. Your teachers did not do a good job preparing their students for college. I like that you plan to be proactive in preventing plagiarism as a teacher. I like the poster idea, too. That's a great way to continuously remind students of the rules of plagiarism.
ReplyDeleteThank you Sarah! I belive that no student should go through what I went through.
ReplyDeleteI remember being taught how to foot note and make bibliographies in high school but I never fully understood how to properly site a reference until college. I think that this should be taught as soon as students start being required to write papers. Like you said with today's technology students have access to everything and they just think they can use it for their own benefit at no cost to them. They need to know that when someone works hard on something it is not fair for the student to steal it. The information is put out for eveyone to use but proper credit is due for using it. I think that lessons on plagerism should be built into the core curriculum for English classes at the middle school level. This is the only way that teachers in upper grade levels can be sure that their students have been taught the rules on plagiarism. Until that time, I definitely think it is a good idea for every teacher who requires a student to write a paper to teach the rules and post them in the classroom. This is the only fair way to avoid confusion and negative consequences by someone who really does not know.
ReplyDelete"We, as teacher, need…" teachers, not teacher
ReplyDeleteI continue to be amazed at how poorly schools prepare students to avoid plagiarizing.