Inclusion“Plagiarism” as such is often considered deliberate, but this lesson teaches citation conventions specifically as conventions, not as morality, acknowledging that they vary greatly across genre and culture. Students will be able to convey accurately the meaning of an academic text and avoid plagiarism by paraphrasing and quoting effectively. Key Termsplagiarism, paraphrase, quotation, summary, citation, attribution, academic misconduct TimingIntroduce these concepts to students at the start of WR 111 Unit 2, “Writing for and with Others.” At this point, students will be familiar with summarizing, as they will have submitted the basic summary, and been introduced to the concepts of paraphrase and quotation. In addition, students will have been exposed to the basic elements of BU’s Academic Conduct Codeas part of the acculturation unit. Paraphrasing can be compared and contrasted with summarizing as well as using quotations. It is important to acknowledge that intellectual property and plagiarism are cultural concepts, and that different approaches to these ideas, particularly in some students’ home countries, are equally valid. However, as students are currently studying in the U.S., they must know and comply with the American rules and practice. In some students’ traditions it is accepted practice to use well-known quotations and ideas without attribution, as they are considered shared knowledge and heritage wisdom. Students need to be explicitly informed that all quotations and paraphrases in academic writing should be attributed. For many WR 111 students the techniques of paraphrasing and incorporating quotations are introduced for the first time after they begin developing summarizing skills (writing the basic summary and giving presentations on some essays). Students often have difficulty paraphrasing and employ a mechanical approach when doing so. They may substitute synonyms for some of the passage’s vocabulary, and may not be aware that they cannot use the author’s syntactic structures. These problems may be compounded by poor comprehension of the original text and lack of sufficient vocabulary. Lesson
This lesson precedes WR 111 students’ study of genre, but students should be made aware that genre does dictate when and whether we cite a source. In a newspaper article, for example, the writer may refer in words to the source of information or a quotation, but MLA citation, for example, is not required. Scientific research papers, law journal articles, and other academic papers may require footnotes rather than in-text citations.
MetacognitionThis lesson begins with a question about students’ prior knowledge and has them reflect on the differences between their home country’s approach to intellectual property and plagiarism as compared with that of the U.S. It later asks students to reflect on what they know, and what they think they know, about what plagiarism is and what types of work are governed by the concept of plagiarism. You may assign a brief write-up on the challenges students experienced when reconciling the cultural conventions of attribution of their home countries and the U.S. PART I: CHECK FOR PRIOR KNOWLEDGE
PART II: INTRODUCE TOOLS FOR TEXT ATTRIBUTION
PART III: PRACTICE WITH PARAPHRASE
For students
For instructors
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