Hello, my name is Professor Andrew Young, and today we'll be discussing plagiarism in two lessons. The first lesson will focus on what is plagiarism, while the second lesson will address how to avoid plagiarism. But first, what is plagiarism? According to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, plagiarism is the act of using another person's words or ideas without giving credit to that person. The key phrase in Webster's definition is, without...
Giving credit. Giving credit is imperative. So you may be thinking, okay, okay, but why is it important to avoid plagiarism? If I like those words and I agree with them, can I just take them as my own?
It can't be that big of a deal, right? The short answer, plagiarism is a big deal. Before I explain the academic consequences of plagiarism, let me give you a musical example. that illustrates the seriousness of plagiarism.
Take a listen to this song by Marvin Gaye titled Got to Give It Up, which was released in 1977. Now, listen to this song titled Blur Lines, which was released in 2013 by Robin Thicke, featuring Pharrell Williams and T.I. Notice any similarities between the two songs? Marvin Gaye's family did. In fact, Robin Thicke was accused of plagiarism by the Marvin Gaye estate, which provided significant evidence against Thicke's blurred lines. And the Rolling Stone reported that Thicke and Company had to pay out a whopping $7.3 million to Marvin Gaye's estate for plagiarism.
So what about plagiarism in academia? You'll probably not owe millions of dollars. nor go to jail, however, plagiarism is still a very serious offense.
For instance, Florida State College of Jacksonville's policy states in the Student Rights and Responsibilities under the heading Procedures for Handling Alleged Academic Dishonesty, academic dishonesty in any form is expressly prohibited by the rules of the District Board of Trustees of Florida State College at Jacksonville. The consequences can include either failing the student for the assignment, failing the student for the assignment, or failing the student for the assignment. bailing the student for the course, or referring the student or students for possible suspension or dismissal.
So it is very serious indeed. So how can we avoid those blurred lines of plagiarism and original thought? First, it is key to understand the assignment and its expectations.
For instance, if professors in social sciences or nursing or business, those professors often prefer a style called APA. Professors in the liberal arts, humanities, office. prefer MLA. There are other citation styles, so you want to make sure you format your citations according to your audience. If your professor doesn't state specifically, be sure to ask.
For this presentation, I'll be focusing on MLA, which stands for Modern Language Association. So what constitutes plagiarism? Some of the more obvious examples include buying an essay from a website like pay4essays.net or freshessays.com.
Another example would be letting your mom or dad or boyfriend, girlfriend, friend, neighbor write the essay for you. But if you do write the essay, rather than trying to dishonestly farm it out, you want to make sure that you aren't committing these acts of plagiarism. Copying information word for word, also known as verbatim, directly from the source without giving credit. That is egregious. That's equally as bad.
Or, and many students are unaware of this, if you paraphrase, which is putting the information in your own words from a book. book or website, but you do not give credit to the book or website. That is still plagiarism.
Why, you may be wondering? It's plagiarism because it's not your ideas. Sure, you may agree with those ideas, but it's important to give the writer credit for those ideas.
So how do you avoid plagiarizing a source? In order to document a source in MLA format, there are two essential ingredients. The first is called a works cited page.
Okay, and each source will have what's called a works cited page. entry that's organized in alphabetical order and then there is a corresponding in-text citation also called parenthetical citation within your essay these two parts work together like a cross-referencing system so when your professor reads your essay and encounters a citation within the essay he or she can go to the end of the essay read the works cited page which lists all of your sources in order to locate the source in short in order to document you need a complete citation in a works cited page and an in-text citation of the source within your paper. Both are required in order to provide full credit to the source.
In the next videos we'll be discussing how to write a works cited page and how to effectively use in-text citations whether using direct quotes, paraphrase information, or signal phrases also called an attribution. And this is the end of the first lesson on plagiarism. Stay tuned for lesson number two.