语言教学 | 普渡大学写作教学系列Research&Citation22-Avoiding Plagiarism(2)

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3、Safe Practices

Most students, of course, don't intend to plagiarize. In fact, most realize that citing sources actually builds their credibility for an audience and even helps writers to better grasp information relevant to a topic or course of study. Mistakes in citation and crediting can still happen, so here are certain practices that can help you not only avoid plagiarism, but even improve the efficiency and organization of your research and writing.

Best Practices for Research and Drafting

Reading and note-taking

• In your notes, always mark someone else's words with a big Q, for quote, or use big quotation marks

• Indicate in your notes which ideas are taken from sources with a big S, and which are your own insights (ME)

• When information comes from sources, record relevant documentation in your notes (book and article titles; URLs from the internet)

Interviewing and conversing

• Take lots of thorough notes; if you have any of your own thoughts as you're interviewing, mark them clearly.

• If your subject will allow you to record the conversation or interview (and you have proper clearance to do so through an Institutional Review Board, or IRB), place your recording device in an optimal location between you and the speaker so you can hear clearly when you review the recordings. Test your equipment, and bring plenty of backup batteries and backup equipment.

• If you're interviewing via email, retain copies of the interview subject's emails as well as the ones you send in reply.

• Make any additional, clarifying notes immediately after the interview has concluded.

Writing paraphrases or summaries

• Use a statement that credits the source somewhere in the paraphrase or summary (e.g., According to Jonathan Kozol, ...).

• If you're having trouble summarizing, try writing your paraphrase or summary of a text without looking at the original, relying only on your memory and notes.

• Check your paraphrase or summary against the original text; correct any errors in content accuracy, and be sure to use quotation marks to set off any exact phrases from the original text.

• Check your paraphrase or summary against sentence and paragraph structure, as copying those is also considered plagiarism.

• Put quotation marks around any unique words or phrases that you cannot or do not want to change: e.g., "savage inequalities" exist throughout our educational system (Kozol).

Writing direct quotations

• Keep the source author's name in the same sentence as the quote.

• Mark the quote with quotation marks, or set it off from your text in its own block, per the style guide your paper follows.

• Quote no more material than is necessary; if a short phrase from a source will suffice, don't quote an entire paragraph.

• To shorten quotes by removing extra information, use ellipsis points (...) to indicate omitted text, keeping in mind that:

• In longer quotes where you have omitted a sentence in between other complete sentences, maintain terminal puncutation in between the ellipses.

• Example: "None of the national reports I saw made even passing references to inequality or segregation. . . Booker T. Washington was cited with increasing frequency, Du Bois never, and Martin Luther King only with cautious selectivity." (Kozol 3).

• To give context to a quote or otherwise add wording to it, place added words in brackets, ( [] ); be careful not to editorialize or make any additions that skew the original meaning of the quote—do that in your main text, e.g.,

• OK: Kozol claims there are "savage inequalities" in our educational system, which is obvious.

• WRONG: Kozol claims there are "[obvious] savage inequalities" in our educational system.

• Use quotes that will have the most rhetorical, argumentative impact in your paper; too many direct quotes from sources may weaken your credibility, as though you have nothing to say yourself, and will certainly interfere with your style

Writing about another's ideas

• Note the name of the idea's originator in the sentence or throughout a paragraph about the idea.

• Use parenthetical citations, footnotes, or endnotes to refer readers to additional sources about the idea, as necessary.

• Be sure to use quotation marks around key phrases or words that the idea's originator used to describe the idea.

Maintaining drafts of your paper

Sometimes innocent, hard-working students are accused of plagiarism because a dishonest student steals their work. This can happen in all kinds of ways, from a roommate copying files off of your computer, to someone finding files on a USB drive left in a computer lab. Here are some practices to keep your own intellectual property safe:

• Do not save your paper in the same file over and over again; use a numbering system and the Save As... function; E.g., you might have research_paper001.doc, research_paper002.doc, research_paper003.doc as you progress. Do the same thing for any online files you are working with. Having multiple draft versions may help prove that the work is yours (assuming you are being ethical in how you cite ideas in your work!).

• Maintain copies of your drafts in numerous media, and different secure locations when possible; don't just rely on your hard drive, USB drive, or the cloud.

• Password-protect your computer; if you have to leave a computer lab for a quick bathroom break, lock or log out of your station.

• Password-protect your files; this is possible in all sorts of programs, from Adobe Acrobat to Microsoft word (just be sure not to forget the password!).

• When working in cloud-based platforms, like Box, or Google Drive, be sure to save multiple separate drafts of your work, rather than just editing over the original.

Revising, proofreading, and finalizing your paper

• Proofread and cross-check with your notes and sources to make sure that anything coming from an outside source is acknowledged in some combination of the following ways:

• If you have any questions about citation, ask your instructor well in advance of your paper's due date, so if you have to make any adjustments to your citations, you have the time to do them well.

• In-text citation, otherwise known as parenthetical citation

• Footnotes or endnotes

• Bibliography, References, or Works Cited pages

• Quotation marks around short quotes; longer quotes set off by themselves, as prescribed by a research and citation style guide

• Indirect quotations: citing a source that cites another source

Works Cited

Kozol, Jonathan. Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools. Crown, 1992.

4、Safe Practices: An Exercise

Read over each of the following passages, and respond on your own or as a class as to whether or not each passage uses citations accurately. If it doesn't, what would you do to improve the passage so it's properly cited?

1. Last summer, my family and I traveled to Chicago, which was quite different from the rural area I grew up in. We saw the dinosaur Sue at the Field Museum and ate pizza at Gino's East.

2. Americans want to create a more perfect union; they also want to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for everybody.

3. I find it ridiculous that 57% of high school students think their teachers assign too much homework.

Passages 4, 5, and 6 all refer to the following passage from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from the Birmingham Jail":

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

4. Dr. King was certain that nobody would want to be contented with a feigning type of social analysis that concerns itself only with effects and doesn't deal with root causes.

5. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that the city of Birmingham's "white power structure" left African-Americans there with "no alternative" but to demonstrate ("Letter from the Birmingham Jail" para. 5).

6. In "Letter from the Birmingham Jail," King writes to fellow clergy saying that although they "deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham, your statement fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations."

7. My friend Kara told me that she loves living so close to the ocean.

8. Americans are guaranteed the right to freely gather for peaceful meetings.

5、Best Practices for Teachers

Suspecting a student of plagiarism is never pleasant; proving a student has plagiarized is even worse. It's common for teachers to feel offended and hurt when students act unethically in their courses. But there are some things you, as a teacher, can do to minimize plagiarism in your classes. Click here for more resources on how to prevent plagiarism in the classroom.

Developing a strong course policy on plagiarism

One can never be too direct in explaining to students what actions can be considered plagiarism in their class. Writing and providing students with a course policy statement that includes a section on plagiarism is an excellent first step. Be sure to include and cite any school policies that might be suspect.

Here, for example, is a statement that Professor Irwin Weiser of Purdue University has used with his Introductory Composition courses:

The following statement about honesty and the use of sources is from the Introduction to First-Year Composition Courses:

When writers use material from other sources, they must acknowledge this source. Not doing so is called plagiarism, which means using without credit the ideas or expressions of another. You are therefore cautioned (1) against using, word for word, without acknowledgment, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, etc., from the printed or manuscript material of others; (2) against using with only slight changes the materials of another; and (3) against using the general plan, the main headings, or a rewritten form of someone else's material. These cautions apply to the work of other students as well as to the published work of professional writers.

Of course, these cautions also apply to information you find on the Internet, World Wide Web, or other electronic or on-line sources. Since we will be discussing how to acknowledge and cite sources, you should be able to avoid accidentally plagiarizing anyone else's work. If you are in doubt, please ask me, since the consequences for plagiarism are severe. The university policies about plagiarism include penalties ranging from failure of an assignment to expulsion from the university. In this class, anyone who plagiarizes fails the course, and I will probably inform the Office of the Dean of Students of the reason for the failing grade.

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