Julianne Newmark

Plagiarism Detection
A Brief Essay, Appended with Advice . . .

     For all teachers and tutors of writing, academic dishonesty among student writers causes great concern. But, how does a teacher or a tutor detect plagiarism in student writing? Below I will describe the practices of plagiarism detection among writing teachers and following that I will offer advice -- and further reading -- for writing center tutors.

     For writing teachers, the task of plagiarism detection is somewhat easier than it is for tutors, as a writing instructor's job is to assign various kinds of writing assignments -- from impromptu ones to highly formal, multi-draft ones -- and to develop an understanding of each individual student's writing style and voice. So, for a teacher of writing, when a student submits a paper that does not conform to that student's previous writing style, often the teacher looks for further clarification of this difference in the student's past writing exercises. The ideal answer to the question of why the writing style is different is that the student simply improved his/her writing over the course of an academic term or sequence of weeks in a course. Yet, sometimes the shift between papers, in terms of quality and tone, is alarming to the instructor and concerns emerge regarding whether the student "stole" (or, as frequently, borrowed or incorrectly cited) someone else's writing or ideas. The writing teacher has the benefit of being able to compare a student's writing over time and chart progress or erratic changes. The writing teacher, upon suspecting that a student's paper might not be entirely the student's own, might take the first step of asking a student to meet with the instructor in the instructor's office hours to investigate the changes in style or tone in a paper. Generally, the instructor's first move is not to accuse a student of plagiarism.

     Writing tutors, and instructors of writing of course, must understand that all students do not come to the university with an equal understanding of what, exactly, constitutes "intellectual property." Some international students come to American universities from cultures where it is a sign of respect and thoroughness to seamlessly employ another scholar's ideas in ones paper. Writing center tutors and writing instructors both must be sensitive to the various reasons why a student's paper might be filled with words and ideas that are not that student's own. Nevertheless, students engaged in university-level education must come to understand the value of their own writing, and this is perhaps the most effective way to combat plagiarism. If a student comes to believe that the teacher values the student's own articulation of an idea or problem -- despite that articulation's imperfections -- the student will be less prone to incorporate without citation someone else's ideas or words. But that is a bigger pedagogical kettle of fish than there is space here to discuss. . .

     Plagiarism, of course, is the use of someone else's (other than the writer's) ideas, words, or concepts without appropriate citation or attribution. So, based on this definition, there exist a wide range of transgressions that might be, in some way, "plagiarism." It takes students a long time to develop the skills they need to cite fully and appropriately in all instances, and most writers, regardless of their level, can never do this entirely. This is not to excuse plagiarism. Plagiarism can often be egregious, "on purpose," and can result in a student's expulsion from a university. Usually, however, the cases are less severe, and result from students not caring or not understanding, in the words Rebecca Moore Howard (see below) "the values of the academy." Students often do not care about the values of the academy, perhaps, because they do not see the connection between the values of their own lives and the values of the academy, and teachers in writing classrooms have the best results combating plagiarism when they can connects students own values to the academic values the teacher attempts to deliver in the classroom. This is a topic bordering on the real concerns of Writing Across Communities pedagogy (in that students often come from communities that really do not share the values of the academy, in that the home communities may not be individualistic, authoritative, and, in some ways, proscriptive, as academia often is) -- so we will have to save a foray into Writing Across Communities pedagogy for another time.

     So, writing center tutors cannot, obviously, teach or re-teach or serve as police-people of writing students, whatever discipline these students are coming from. What writing center tutors can do, however, is practice strategies that further the prevailing goals of an institution's (like New Mexico Tech's) compositionists and other instructors and ultimately serve the real needs of the tutees.

Writing center tutors should:

•  Understand their institution's official plagiarism policy (click here for to link to NMT's policy)

•  Have a thorough understanding of the citation expectations (and preferred citation style) of the composition instructors at their institution. Since writing center tutors work with students from many disciplines, tutors should also have a working understanding of other citation styles in use across disciplines. I say "working" understanding because it is more important for tutors to be able to direct tutees to information than to necessarily have immediate expertise in a certain citation style. I have provided links to citations styles below and on the other pages in this section I provide some basic information on particular citation concerns.

•  Assume the best of tutees. By this I mean, if a tutor suspects that a paper is entirely plagiarized or includes chunks of plagiarized materials (or is "patchwritten," as Howard calls it), the tutor might begin by asking if the tutee included all appropriate citation in the paper. If the student says that, yes, the paper includes all necessary citation, as far as the student knows, the tutor might then point to a particular passage and ask the tutee to discuss the passage. Often, this process frees the tutee up to disclose that the information is not entirely the student's own. This opens the door for the tutor to encourage the tutee to cite the source fully, meaning using an attributive tag and a parenthetical citation (per MLA rules, I should add).

•  Ask students to bring previous writing exercises so that a tutor might compare a current assignment to a previous one, as a way to identify radically different writing styles.

•  Remind students to bring their current paper assignment.

•  Become familiar with standard examples of plagiarism. See links below for examples.

•  Above all, strive to create a comfortable environment for the tutee, an environment that is not accusatory. It is often a great accomplishment for a student to visit a writing center (whether that visit was required or not). Tutors should remember that students who plagiarize are not typically trying to thwart university regulations. Some are, but many students plagiarize because they are poorly organized, because they have no confidence in their own writing, or because they are terrified of failing. Failing is certainly a terrible thing, but the very real result, per university regulations, of being ejected from the university, is a much worse fate.

     Obviously, writing center tutors, composition instructors, and other instructors who assign writing exercises all need to be on the same page in terms of citation expectations and plagiarism tolerance. Students -- all students -- need to be aware of these conversations, conversations which will ideally take place in a non-antagonistic, mutually beneficial fashion.

The following resources are helpful to writing center tutors -- and the advisors who guide them:

"Plagiarism, Rhetorical Theory, and the Writing Center: New Approaches, New Locations," by Linda Shamoon and Deborah H. Burns. In Perspectives on Plagiarism and Intellectual Property in a Postmodern World. 1999

"Study of Teacher Error: Misreading Resistance in the Basic Writing Classroom," by Sara Biggs Chaney. Journal of Basic Writing. Spring 2004. [This is an interesting essay that presents ideas concerning student resistance to academic traditionalism in light of one student's particular (deliberate?) transgression of plagiarism rules and lessons on these "rules" in the instructor's course.]

"Plagiarism, Pedagogy, and Controversy: A Conversation with Rebecca Moore Howard," an interview by Michele Eodice. Issues in Writing. Fall/Winter 2002. [This is an easy-to-read and accessible interview with Howard, who is a well known scholar of composition and has gained much attention for her discussions of plagiarism.]

Links to online resources for plagiarism and citation:

For New Mexico Tech students, the first place to go is the NMT Library website, which includes numerous resources for all citation styles. Click here to visit.

"Citing Sources and Plagiarism," Emory University
"The Plagiarism Court: You be the Judge," Fairfield University. Plagiarism avoidance tutorial.
"Plagiarism: What It is and How to Recognize and Avoid It," Indiana University, Bloomington
"Avoiding Plagiarism," The OWL (Online Writing Lab) at Purdue

"MLA Formatting and Style Guide," The OWL (Online Writing Lab) at Purdue
"MLA Citation Style" Cornell University Library
"APA Citation Guide" Ohio State University Library
"APA Citation Style" Cornell University Library

Plagiarism Detection A Brief Essay, Appended with Advice . . .

Plagiarism Detection
A Brief Essay, Appended with Advice . . .