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Name: _______________________________________
Class: ______________________________________
Avoiding Plagiarism
Materials: Highlighter and pen and a separate piece of paper. Staple your sample paraphrases and
summaries to the worksheet.
Complete the following worksheet, using your notes to guide your practice. Turn in the worksheet before
you leave, even if you are not done.
Read the following examples of paraphrasing, summary aand plagiarism. Highlight areas of direct
quotes under the Plagiarized example.
Examples:
Original Passage:
Students frequently overuse direct quotation in taking notes, and as a result they overuse quotations in
the final [research] paper. Probably only about 10% of your final manuscript should appear as directly
quoted matter. Therefore, you should strive to limit the amount of exact transcribing of source materials
while taking notes.
Lester, James D. Writing Research Papers. 2nd ed. (1976): 46-47.
Legitimate Paraphrase:
In research papers, students often quote excessively, failing to keep quoted material down to a desirable
level. Since the problem usually originates during note taking, it is essential to minimize the material
recorded verbatim (Lester 46).
Acceptable Summary:
Students should take just a few notes in direct quotation from sources to help minimize the amount of
quoted material in a research paper (Lester 46).
Unacceptable/Plagiarized: (Please highlight areas of direct quotes)
Students often use too many direct quotations when they take notes, resulting in too many of them in the
final research paper. In fact, probably only about 10% of the final copy should consist of directly quoted
material. So it is important to limit the amount of source material copied while taking notes.
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Practice Time!
“This is the uncomfortable truth about teaching. By traditional ethics and public insistence (not to
mention court rulings), a patient’s right to the best care possible must trump the objective of training
novices. We want perfection without practice. Yet everyone is harmed if no one is trained for the future”
(24).
Gawande, Atul. Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science. New York:
Metropolitan, 2002. Print.
Look at the following and LABEL, which one is an example for paraphrase, summary, and
plagiarism:
The uncomfortable truth about teaching doctors is that a patient has the right to the best care possible.
Patient safety must take priority over training novices. Yet people want perfect doctors without having
their doctors practice (Gawande 24).
Although everyone is entitled to the best and safest medical care, doctors or other medical professionals
need to gain experience by practicing on live patients in order to continue producing safe and
experienced doctors in the future (Gawande 24).
New doctors require a training forum that will potentially place patients at risk; however, in order for
doctors to gain experience, they need the hands on practice (Gawande 24).
Now you try!
Read the following passage, and then come up with one acceptable paraphrased and one acceptable
summarized example for the following excerpt. Write your examples on a separate piece of paper, and
then staple that paper to the back of this worksheet.
Excerpt:
Many scientists have tried to predict the future of Earth's endangered plants and animals. Yet, few studies have
investigated those that already have become extinct.
Looking backward is important for understanding how extinction rates have changed over time. It also identifies
factors in the environment that have had an impact.
Now, a researcher from Macquarie University in Australia has published a study examining recent extinctions
within two groups of animals — reptiles and amphibians. The results are alarming. Most importantly, the study
found that approximately 200 frog species have already gone extinct, and hundreds more may be dying out.
John Alroy is a science professor at the university and the paper's author. The study was inspired by the
question of a journalist. Alroy was asked what scientists know about the number of species that have already
gone extinct. "I looked for a paper where they do this, and I didn't find one," Alroy said.
So he decided to write it himself. He chose reptiles and amphibians partly because there was a large amount of
information available for these groups, and partly because scientists are increasingly concerned over frog
populations, which are thought to be shrinking in many places. "There was a very strong indication that I would
get some frog extinctions," Alroy said.
2015). Newsela | Many types of frogs are going extinct; scientists ... Retrieved November 5, 2015, from
https://newsela.com/articles/frog-extinction/id/12365
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