Welcome to the:
PDGP Anti-Plagiarism Workshop
Identifying and Avoiding Plagiarism:
A How-To Workshop
Dr. Emma E. Buchtel
Outline
• Plagiarism: Basic definition and why we get
upset about it (why you shouldn’t do it)
• Why students plagiarize & how to avoid it
• Exercise: What is plagiarism?
• Exercise: What is a good paraphrase?
• Exercise: What is APA style?
Plagiarism
• When you are writing a paper / essay / etc.,
using someone else’s words, ideas, or other
work (graphics, information, data, etc.)
without properly acknowledging where they
came from.
– Note that this means you need to know APA style
so you can “properly acknowledge!”
Why it makes your professors unhappy
• We assume that everything you write is your
idea and your own words / your own way of
writing.
• So, if you plagiarize, it’s the same as telling us
a lie: “This is me! Oh, oops, no it isn’t.”
• It wastes our time… cheats your classmates…
and cheats YOU of your own learning /
education.
Why students do it
• Lack of time
– (Solution: Give yourself enough time.)
• Insecurity with English
– (Plagiarizing will not help you! You’ll just get in
trouble, and won’t increase your skills. Editing
your own work, or getting a friend to edit it, will
help!)
• They don’t realize that they’re doing it
Is this plagiarism?
Plagiarism exercise
In pairs, please go over the Handout #1 and
decide whether (and why) each example is or
is not plagiarism.
Why is it plagiarism?
• Original:
• "It has become fashionable to reject the notion of
absolute objectivity on the grounds that objectivity is
simply unattainable or, even if attainable, is
undesirable."
1. I feel it has become fashionable to reject the notion
of absolute objectivity on the grounds that objectivity
is simply unattainable.
This is obviously cheating. Word-for-word copying, and
pretending that it is his own words and opinion.
Why is it plagiarism?
• Original:
• "It has become fashionable to reject the notion of
absolute objectivity on the grounds that objectivity is
simply unattainable or, even if attainable, is
undesirable."
2. According to Lisa Staffen (1996), it has become
fashionable to reject the notion of absolute
objectivity on the grounds that objectivity is simply
unattainable.
This is still cheating. The direct quote needs to be in
quotation marks; it is not his own words.
Why is it plagiarism?
• Original:
• "It has become fashionable to reject the notion of
absolute objectivity on the grounds that objectivity is
simply unattainable or, even if attainable, is
undesirable."
3. I feel it has become stylish to reject the idea of
absolute objectivity on the grounds that objectivity
cannot be achieved.
Again, still cheating: This is just “hiding” the fact that the
original way of writing this sentence came from
someone else. Changing a few words does not make it
a paraphrase.
Why is it plagiarism?
• Original:
• "It has become fashionable to reject the notion of absolute
objectivity on the grounds that objectivity is simply
unattainable or, even if attainable, is undesirable."
4. It has become stylish to reject the idea of absolute
objectivity on the grounds that objectivity cannot be
achieved (Staffen, 1996).
This is still cheating. Again, it is hiding the fact that the original
way of writing the sentence came from someone else. Even
though there is a citation, it’s for the idea only, and does
not acknowledge the time and effort that Staffen used to
write the original sentence in those particular words.
Paraphrasing
• Summarizing an idea in your own words
• How to do it well:
– Think about the meaning of the original passage, and why
it is important for your own essay. Write about it in your
own personal way, and so that it makes sense to include it
in your essay.
– Try saying the meaning to yourself in Chinese and then
writing that in English, without looking back at the original
text.
• How not to do it:
– Change some of the original words to synonyms
– Change the order of the words
Paraphrasing exercise
• In pairs, go to Blackboard:
https://elearn.ied.edu.hk/webapps/portal/fram
eset.jsp
One of you can log in to find the paraphrasing
exercise (in the class PERSONALITY
PSYCHOLOGY, under Class Materials).
Together, do two paraphrases: a bad one
(plagiarism), and a good one (no plagiarism).
APA style
• APA style is used by all psychologists, telling us
how to do in-text citations and create the list
of References.
• The handbook has a useful summary of APA
style for the most common types of
references:
http://www.ied.edu.hk/reg/student_handbook/chap_en15.html
• Try it out: Handout #3
APA style
• In-text citations:
– …is very important (Adamson, 2009; Buchtel &
Underwit, 2003; Clark, 1974).
– “Let’s not quote very much” (Brown & Green, 2004, p.
888).
• Reference list:
– “Hanging indent”: indent all lines after the first one
for each reference.
– No bullet points, numbers, etc.; no full first names…
use RefWorks and you’ll never be wrong!
• http://www.lib.ied.edu.hk/research/refworks/index.html
Other useful websites
https://www.indiana.edu/~istd/overview.html
(especially the “examples” section)
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/resear
ch/r_plagiar.html
(especially the “paraphrasing” section)