NationStates Jolt Archive

This morning, one of my students insulted me. She thought that I wouldn't recognize the difference between her writing, which was adequate but not stellar, and something like this:
Given its heavy repetition, the usual knock against the sestina is that the recurring end words create a static, melancholy mood--and many sestinas are artificially obsessive, monontonous, and predictable.
I know many of you here are still in high school, or are in college. Let me let you in on a little secret, especially those of you in college.

We're not stupid.

We may think ourselves overworked. We may be stressed and under pressure to grade a large number of papers in a short amount of time. We often are concerned by matters more personally pressing than by your essays.

But we are not stupid.

We English teachers, simply because we read so much, become attuned to writing styles, and it doesn't take long for us to recognize our students' various voices, even if we only recognize them subconsciously. Often, that's what happens to me when I catch a plagiarizer--something just feels wrong, and then I start to investigate, and my instincts are rarely wrong. And I'm far from the exception.

This case was easy. She stole her paper from the very page I had used to copy the poem to a handout for the class in the first place. Some are more difficult, but remember--what you can google, we can google.

Don't teachers have that plagarism checker thingy these days?

I'm sure the intent was not to insult you, but simply to cheat :)

what level/age/grade/year do you teach

Don't teachers have that plagarism checker thingy these days?
We have several, but I try to stay away from them because I don't like their policies on intellectual property. When your teacher uploads your paper to somewhere like Turnitin.com, you've ceded your rights to that paper to them, whether you intended to or not. It's written into the contract with the school, which is why I have to put a disclaimer in my syllabus that I have the right to upload if I wish, and that it is a requirement of the course that you, the student, accept it. I think that's going a bit far, especially since Turnitin is making money off their database of legitimate student papers and the students are never being compensated in any way for that.

Oh pfft - plagiarism saves time :D And don't shatter our illusions - everyone knows teachers are all arrogant stodgy old codgers who are stuck in the '60s, and who don't have half as many brain cells as us kids :p

I'm sure the intent was not to insult you, but simply to cheat :)
Oh, I know that insult wasn't the intent, but it's insulting nonetheless. If you plagarize, you're saying, in essence, that your teacher is too stupid to notice that you've suddenly, and with little prompting, completely changed your writing style.

so what did you say to her?

i dont remember if you teach highschool or college but are you even allowed to give out the kind of penalty that plagarism merits?

That sounds eerily like the sort of thing I wrote in my English Lit A level exam...

We have several, but I try to stay away from them because I don't like their policies on intellectual property. When your teacher uploads your paper to somewhere like Turnitin.com, you've ceded your rights to that paper to them, whether you intended to or not. It's written into the contract with the school, which is why I have to put a disclaimer in my syllabus that I have the right to upload if I wish, and that it is a requirement of the course that you, the student, accept it. I think that's going a bit far, especially since Turnitin is making money off their database of legitimate student papers and the students are never being compensated in any way for that.

That's ridiculous. Especially for advanced/creative writing classes, as the student may want to publish at some point.

Meh. A half decent macro tied to a thesaurus will convert a pedestrian web page into unique academic prose with a few button taps. And to be frank, whats the difference between that and 'honest' research?

Considering the pace of modern technology, I propose we leave academic minutiae to the machines and go play outside.

(That was plagiarised, btw.)

...teachers are all arrogant stodgy old codgers who are stuck in the '60s...

Yes, the 1860's.

so what did you say to her?

i dont remember if you teach highschool or college but are you even allowed to give out the kind of penalty that plagarism merits?She wasn't in class today, so I haven't said anything yet. When I do see her, she'll get a letter stating that she's failed the course and that her transcript will be marked with a failing grade due to academic dishonesty. If she already has such a mark, she may be suspended or expelled.

yeah I can tell when someone plagarizes and i am just a student. Some people really are just stupid and think they can get away with anything...oh well...we have a automatic failure code here at my university for plagiarism.

That's ridiculous. Especially for advanced/creative writing classes, as the student may want to publish at some point.I agree, which is why I avoid them except as a last resort. I haven't had to use it yet, and I don't plan on it. In Creative Writing classes, it's usually less of an issue, although there was a case in our department this year where a student in an entry level fiction workshop turned in a story that was actually the first chapter of a novel available online. She failed and got the transcript mark as well.

Funny story..I was accused of plagiarism once, when i forgot to cite MY OWN WORK. Like i had a paper from junior year, so i just copied and pasted some stuff from that in my senior paper. well evidently my teacher used google and found my paper when i posted it on my blog...so yeah she accused me of cheating..i was like wtf..its my own paper..and i had to argue with the idiot for like 30 mins...

Good grief, not only have I had it (DONT PLAGIARISE) rubbed into me for a good 15-30 minutes for every subject i've taken since I began university, (which adds up to 20 subjects, as of this semester, and 5-10 hours of wasted lifespan), I now get it here?

THIS IS MEANT TO BE MY ESCAPE!

*cries*

:p

Meh. A half decent macro tied to a thesaurus will convert a pedestrian web page into unique academic prose with a few button taps. And to be frank, whats the difference between that and 'honest' research?

Considering the pace of modern technology, I propose we leave academic minutiae to the machines and go play outside.

(That was plagiarised, btw.)
I have never seen one of those actually work over a large span

Not only do they make your papers incredibly silly sounding but they have a tenancy to mis-use certain synonyms.

Good grief, not only have I had it (DONT PLAGIARISE) rubbed into me for a good 15-30 minutes for every subject i've taken since I began university, (which adds up to 20 subjects, as of this semester, and 5-10 hours of wasted lifespan), I now get it here?

THIS IS MEANT TO BE MY ESCAPE!

*cries*

:p
I know the feeling ... I just finished a 90 page technical documentation on a clustered distributed Linux threat discovering firewall


The prof said the same about a billion times, not to mention all the other classes I am/have been in

back in 7th grade english class we had to write a book of poetry, (really just 5 poems). i turned mine in and it took the teacher a couple of days to grade them all. after a couple of days of her grading them and giving individual feedback to the students it was time for her to talk to me. She accused me of plagiarism but didnt know where i got them from. we argued over this for about 5 minutes before she had to get to someoen else, i proved to the most i could that i created those on my own and she still didnt beleive me. really pissed me off, i ended up getting a b- on the project because she couldnt prove i coppied it from anywhere and she also didnt want me to full grade because she still thinks i copied it. :headbang:

back in 7th grade english class we had to write a book of poetry, (really just 5 poems). i turned mine in and it took the teacher a couple of days to grade them all. after a couple of days of her grading them and giving individual feedback to the students it was time for her to talk to me. She accused me of plagiarism but didnt know where i got them from. we argued over this for about 5 minutes before she had to get to someoen else, i proved to the most i could that i created those on my own and she still didnt beleive me. really pissed me off, i ended up getting a b- on the project because she couldnt prove i coppied it from anywhere and she also didnt want me to full grade because she still thinks i copied it. :headbang:

...


So where did you copy it from? :D

My husband is in college and he was on a learning team a few classes back where they had to all write a paper together. I proofread it, and not only did I find word for word plagiarism, but I found sentences that were so close that it was just sick that they would even try it.

I don't understand how someone could be so lazy that they would steal someone else's work.

She wasn't in class today, so I haven't said anything yet. When I do see her, she'll get a letter stating that she's failed the course and that her transcript will be marked with a failing grade due to academic dishonesty. If she already has such a mark, she may be suspended or expelled.
if she has already been busted for this in the past, she deserves to be suspended/expelled. if she hasnt, its a lesson that is, for her, worth more than the credit she wold have gotten for the course.

My husband is in college and he was on a learning team a few classes back where they had to all write a paper together. I proofread it, and not only did I find word for word plagiarism, but I found sentences that were so close that it was just sick that they would even try it.

I don't understand how someone could be so lazy that they would steal someone else's work.
I can understand how it happens, but I don't excuse it. School can be overwhelming at times, especially if you're working a job or two or have a family as well. That doesn't change the fact that it's unacceptable, and that punishment must be swift and severe, however.

We English teachers, simply because we read so much, become attuned to writing styles, and it doesn't take long for us to recognize our students' various voices, even if we only recognize them subconsciously. Often, that's what happens to me when I catch a plagiarizer--something just feels wrong, and then I start to investigate, and my instincts are rarely wrong. And I'm far from the exception.

This case was easy. She stole her paper from the very page I had used to copy the poem to a handout for the class in the first place. Some are more difficult, but remember--what you can google, we can google.
Just another point of view. When I was teaching, I'd always assign a couple problems with solutions that I knew were easily found in the library. The problems were always hard enough to prevent all but the best students from solving them on their own. My motive was to make the students do research, something that undergraduates don't seem to take to easily.

if she has already been busted for this in the past, she deserves to be suspended/expelled. if she hasnt, its a lesson that is, for her, worth more than the credit she wold have gotten for the course.
That's the way I look at it. When I was in grad school, I got a rep for busting plagiarists, and I made them all a deal. They take the F and don't try to drop the class, and I leave their records clean. I basically didn't want to mess with the paperwork, and they wanted clean records, and it seemed a fair trade at the time. But in this job, it's official department policy to report all cases, and frankly, I'm happy about it. It's easy for a student to con you into thinking that they've never done it before, blahblahblah, and this way, if they get busted again, the whole world knows it.

I don't understand how someone could be so lazy that they would steal someone else's work.

When it is work that is completely pointless, such as when the teacher gives H/W just because there is a slot there, then it is simply not letting your time be wasted on crap. It causes no harm at all, just getting you past the stuff chucked on the sylabus because they couldn't think of anything else to put there. I admit I have done it on occasion, when I just couldn't handle the work. But not on anything important.

Just another point of view. When I was teaching, I'd always assign a couple problems with solutions that I knew were easily found in the library. The problems were always hard enough to prevent all but the best students from solving them on their own. My motive was to make the students do research, something that undergraduates don't seem to take to easily.
Yeah I have noticed that

Personally when I am trying to accomplish something the FIRST thing I do is look to see if someone had done it before ... and if so what recommendations they have.

Maybe it is the tech geek in me (and it is usually computer work I am trying to do )

I mean often I am doing something that has never (at least that was documented that I can find) been done before.

That for me applies to other parts of my academic career as well (I don't mean copy) but often some people have some very interesting views and takes on the topic manor to get me thinking about it in a new way.

This morning, one of my students insulted me. She thought that I wouldn't recognize the difference between her writing, which was adequate but not stellar, and something like this:

I know many of you here are still in high school, or are in college. Let me let you in on a little secret, especially those of you in college.

We're not stupid.

We may think ourselves overworked. We may be stressed and under pressure to grade a large number of papers in a short amount of time. We often are concerned by matters more personally pressing than by your essays.

But we are not stupid.

We English teachers, simply because we read so much, become attuned to writing styles, and it doesn't take long for us to recognize our students' various voices, even if we only recognize them subconsciously. Often, that's what happens to me when I catch a plagiarizer--something just feels wrong, and then I start to investigate, and my instincts are rarely wrong. And I'm far from the exception.

This case was easy. She stole her paper from the very page I had used to copy the poem to a handout for the class in the first place. Some are more difficult, but remember--what you can google, we can google.

She should have just added the parenthetical citation and a Works Cited page at the end.

When it is work that is completely pointless, such as when the teacher gives H/W just because there is a slot there, then it is simply not letting your time be wasted on crap. It causes no harm at all, just getting you past the stuff chucked on the sylabus because they couldn't think of anything else to put there. I admit I have done it on occasion, when I just couldn't handle the work. But not on anything important.
Remember that if and when you eventually get busted.

She should have just added the parenthetical citation and a Works Cited page at the end.
That's not a solution, not with the level of copying that we're talking about here.

She should have just added the parenthetical citation and a Works Cited page at the end.

A quote without comments is almost worthless. So take that, sig. quoters!

When it is work that is completely pointless, such as when the teacher gives H/W just because there is a slot there, then it is simply not letting your time be wasted on crap. It causes no harm at all, just getting you past the stuff chucked on the sylabus because they couldn't think of anything else to put there. I admit I have done it on occasion, when I just couldn't handle the work. But not on anything important.
homework is never completely pointless. You can always learn something. I would rather take an F than steal someone's work.

A quote without comments is almost worthless. So take that, sig. quoters!
says the man with a quote in his sig. :rolleyes: :p

When it is work that is completely pointless, such as when the teacher gives H/W just because there is a slot there, then it is simply not letting your time be wasted on crap. It causes no harm at all, just getting you past the stuff chucked on the sylabus because they couldn't think of anything else to put there. I admit I have done it on occasion, when I just couldn't handle the work. But not on anything important.
I have NEVER been pushed to that point

Two BS and Two masters and I have worked a MINIMUM of 72 hours a week on top of living and working on a farm

I have NEVER once had to plagerized

Plagiarism is plagiarism. It shouldn't matter if it's just another assignment to fill a slot, or a full-blown paper or exam.

Myself, there are only two things I've done that came close to plagiarism:

1. I looked up the themes of a short story we had to read (where I went to high school, English class was ALL book-reading and writing about those books and the themes in them) because I didn't understand what the assignment meant by a certain question (I've done this one a few times, but I do it only to understand what's meant by the theme, not to cut and paste from the source to pretend I do)
2. I accidentally left a couple of page numbers out of a Grade 10 (or was it Grade 11? I kind of forget. ^^; ) history essay.

Retribution should be swift and academically painful for people who do it on purpose. A page number missing here, or an author's name misspelled, isn't as much an issue, as long as there's some documentation there (The source's and author's name[s]), and the source is easily checked somehow (Pages of notes taken from the source with the documentation information were almost always required when we handed in an essay, just in case we did forget a minor Sourcing detail), but when it's done out of sheer laziness, it's not right. There are still people out there who work fairly for their grades. You shouldn't be allowed to cheat for yours when I got mine the hard way.

says the man with a quote in his sig. :rolleyes: :p

Yeah, thanks. I hadn't noticed.

Given its heavy repetition, the usual knock against the sestina is that the recurring end words create a static, melancholy mood--and many sestinas are artificially obsessive, monontonous, and predictable.

Well, it may not be your student's writing, but someone has a point there!

(I prefer villanelles, Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night" being a prime example [though I'm sure you know what a villanelle is, The Nazz!] They have a similar repetition idea, but the repeated phrases, as opposed to repeated words, create anthemic powerchords of simple phrases)

When it is work that is completely pointless, such as when the teacher gives H/W just because there is a slot there, then it is simply not letting your time be wasted on crap. It causes no harm at all, just getting you past the stuff chucked on the sylabus because they couldn't think of anything else to put there. I admit I have done it on occasion, when I just couldn't handle the work. But not on anything important.
That's funny. I'm not sure students are the best judges of what's pointless.

That's funny. I'm not sure students are the best judges of what's pointless.
You've got that right.

Yeah, thanks. I hadn't noticed.

LOL :D

Oh poo on that! *goes off to super uber cool website to get history essay*

That's not a solution, not with the level of copying that we're talking about here.
It might not have saved that paper, but for her, some quote marks and citations would have made the difference between a failing grade on the paper (with stern critique from you) and a mark on her transcript for dishonesty.

There is no excuse for plagiarism. Period.

It might not have saved that paper, but for her, some quote marks and citations would have made the difference between a failing grade on the paper (with stern critique from you) and a mark on her transcript for dishonesty.

There is no excuse for plagiarism. Period.
Well here's the thing. The assignment called for an explication, 400 word minimum, of a poem we'd covered in class. No need for research--no room for it, really. You're correct that it would have saved her a failing grade for the course, but I wouldn't have accepted the assignment in that form.

*revels in taking something almost completely devoid of essay writing and hand-in tasks, and finds it comforting that dictated patient charts are impossible to plagiarise*

*revels in taking something almost completely devoid of essay writing and hand-in tasks, and finds it comforting that dictated patient charts are impossible to plagiarise*
Yeah it is also rather hard in my line of work to plagiarize documentation for a program that you designed :)

Well here's the thing. The assignment called for an explication, 400 word minimum, of a poem we'd covered in class. No need for research--no room for it, really. You're correct that it would have saved her a failing grade for the course, but I wouldn't have accepted the assignment in that form.
Nor should you accept it. In fact, I might even fail her for the course for this, if I were her teacher. But it's one thing to flunk a course and another to have your transcript marked up for plagiarism where other teachers and even future employers can see it. She can take the course over again. She may not be able to expunge her record. This is the price of cheating. People need to take it seriously. It may not seem so, but it is better to fail honestly than to cheat.

Remember that if and when you eventually get busted.

homework is never completely pointless. You can always learn something. I would rather take an F than steal someone's work.

Homework is often pointless. When the entire class can get an A or more with no effort, then it is pointless. However it still takes up time either way. Or when it is not on the course, and is set by a substitute, that is pointless, etc. There are many cases where it is set just to give us something to do.

That's funny. I'm not sure students are the best judges of what's pointless.

Maybe not. But sometimes it is so fucking obvious I feel insulted. The teacher couldn't find anything better for us to do than: "Compare and contrast the two poems X and Y". Hang on, didn't we just do that in class? So I am just copying down stuff from easy memory? What is the point? We already have anotations etc, all I am doing is spending an hour building the framework.

I have NEVER been pushed to that point

Two BS and Two masters and I have worked a MINIMUM of 72 hours a week on top of living and working on a farm

I have NEVER once had to plagerized

Well, we are different people. I find the grip of school life, the ever pressing demand for work that does not stimulate but rather dull our mental facilities, that leaves me sometimes so drained I can't start the REAL work, which is designed to get every fuckwit though the same square peg, into a world with round holes.

I know I have 'issues' so no need saying so. But I am kinda pissed off with the school system, which has sent me into depression several times, which caused me to miss school as I was assulted by psycosimatic ailments. I agree that plageism is a bad thing when your work is being presented to the world at large as your own, but when only you and your teacher ever see it, I can see no harm at all.

That's funny. I'm not sure students are the best judges of what's pointless.
Maybe not. But sometimes it is so fucking obvious I feel insulted. The teacher couldn't find anything better for us to do than: "Compare and contrast the two poems X and Y". Hang on, didn't we just do that in class? So I am just copying down stuff from easy memory? What is the point? We already have anotations etc, all I am doing is spending an hour building the framework.

I taught physics, not lit, so my slant on things is a little different than Nazz's. If I made an assignment to continue something from class, it was typically to continue a proof or derivation that I had started in class.

If I had been teaching lit or poetry, and I made an assignment like you described, I would have found it unsatisfactory to just receive a repeat of what was said in class. Undergraduates should have the ability to extend a discussion. If the assignment looks like BS, you probably need glasses.

We English teachers, simply because we read so much, become attuned to writing styles, and it doesn't take long for us to recognize our students' various voices, even if we only recognize them subconsciously.
Speaking from the perspective of a one-time English major, this is true. Case in point: I'd written a paper in my English class at the University of Maryland, University College several years ago and I forgot to put my name on the paper. Now, this class only met one night per week over the course of a 15 week semester, and this couldn't have been more than week 5 or week 6. Instead of simply marking "Name?" on the paper or asking around class or in front of class who wrote the paper, she wrote my name with a question mark. Within a very short time, she'd recognised my style of writing enough to make a correct deduction who the missing student's name was.

Don't think you can make a sea change improvement in your writing and get away with it. You WILL get caught. When you do, you could have the book thrown at you. If it's Beowulf in the original Old English, those mofos hurt.

What? I wasn't plagiarising, that's a really really long quote. Didn't you read the rest of it?.....But I handed it up to you, you must have lost it. I demand an A!
:p

Personally, I'd rather take the zero. If I'm going to work, I may as well write it myself.

I taught physics, not lit, so my slant on things is a little different than Nazz's. If I made an assignment to continue something from class, it was typically to continue a proof or derivation that I had started in class.

If I had been teaching lit or poetry, and I made an assignment like you described, I would have found it unsatisfactory to just receive a repeat of what was said in class. Undergraduates should have the ability to extend a discussion. If the assignment looks like BS, you probably need glasses.
While I do agree absolutly sometimes the gen eds DO throw apparent BS at you

Thats why I loved it when I got into my masters and later my post grad ... not only was it intresting it was true challange (and I got to make projects that so far have made me over 40 thousand dollars)

Homework is often pointless. When the entire class can get an A or more with no effort, then it is pointless. However it still takes up time either way. Or when it is not on the course, and is set by a substitute, that is pointless, etc. There are many cases where it is set just to give us something to do.The point is repetition. Practice. It leads to memorization (in the case of something like math or science). Or, perhaps, others found it difficult.



Maybe not. But sometimes it is so fucking obvious I feel insulted. The teacher couldn't find anything better for us to do than: "Compare and contrast the two poems X and Y". Hang on, didn't we just do that in class? So I am just copying down stuff from easy memory? What is the point? We already have anotations etc, all I am doing is spending an hour building the framework. see above. She probably also wants you to look deeper and find something more. I discussed one sonnet (so 14 lines of iambic pentameter) for a class period and a half...which equals two hours and fifteen minutes. And the class STILL had more to discuss...we just had to move on. I wrote 2500 words on 23 words (note: words, not lines) of poetry. Find something beyond what you said in class. Also, if you're just writing what you said in class, there is no reason it should take you a full hour.


I know I have 'issues' so no need saying so. But I am kinda pissed off with the school system, which has sent me into depression several times, which caused me to miss school as I was assulted by psycosimatic ailments. I agree that plageism is a bad thing when your work is being presented to the world at large as your own, but when only you and your teacher ever see it, I can see no harm at all.Why is it only wrong when many people see it? The teacher is grading you, not whomever you chose to copy off of. You didn't earn the A, don't deserve it, and, in some cases such as a school like mine with grade deflation, just took it away from someone who actually DID earn it.


more on topic, I was actually put on the judiciary comittee for a girl...I can't figure out why she appealed it, but it was a pretty clear case. The professor read the thesis and said "I've heard this before". That is pretty rare in a 500 level class to not have something atleast mildly unique to say about a character as dynamic as Iago. So he was triggered, went, got a book off his shelf, and found the article that used it. There were a total of three paragraphs either directly taken or partially copied. Despite the fact that there was a word for word match of her work, she still brought it to jury and denied ever having seen that text. I couldn't help but smile when we told her that there was no question she was guilty.

Seriously, if it is that obvious, don't waste your time, the professors time, the deans time, and twelve of your classmates time

That's not a solution, not with the level of copying that we're talking about here.

gotcha... more or less a straight copy/paste then. nice.

Personally, I'd rather take the zero. If I'm going to work, I may as well write it myself.

...there is much opportunity to be had at writing bullsh*t papers in Sociology classes...

I especially remember the Population Problems class... we were given two population statistics and ordered to write an 8-10 page paper, drawing conclusions about the population based on those two statistics.

This year in my English class(I'm a Junior at a good high school) four students plagiarised, all from sparknotes.com for their term papers. They were caught by turnitin.com and tedious work by my English teacher.

It just stuns me that intelligent, hard-working students are so careless to plagiarise and get caught!

Everyone know that you have to auto-summarize and change words around.

Seriously, I have a huge problem with the idea that people that I would consider honest and honorable(cause I thought that all of these people were) would try to do something so blatantly unethical.

...there is much opportunity to be had at writing bullsh*t papers in Sociology classes...

I especially remember the Population Problems class... we were given two population statistics and ordered to write an 8-10 page paper, drawing conclusions about the population based on those two statistics.
thats why I don't get it...particularly with the kind of assignment Nazz gave...I could bullshit a few dozen pages on any given poem and get atleast a C on a bad day (not to mention, it's a poem. Unless we're talking Beowulf or Song of Myself, they don't take all that long to read). Any semi-decent English student can do the same. So why bother copying someone elses bullshit?

I have my own experience, as a student, with plagiarism.

And I'd like to note that it doesn't take an english teacher to know when something is plagiarized.

My junior year in english, we were divided up into groups and allowed to pick books to read. Me and one other guy I kinda knew picked enders game (more or less offered as a concession to the geek (me) and the semi geek in the class)
After reading the book, we were asked to write a paper about something relating to one of the themes in the book. One of the prevalant themes in enders game is war. So, being a little ambitious myself, I get my teammate to go along with my plan, which was to do a rather impressive report on the history of war, devoting a page or two to each era (medieval, WWII, Greek, Modern, so on.) The paper was projected to be about 18 pages, and we would each do about nine. So being the rediculous procrastinator I am, I write all of my half (sumerian through midieval) on the night before it's due. I finish around midnight, a bit exhausted but feeling good. So I pull out the disk that my partner's half of the report, which he'd done earlier, was on. I started looking through it. I thought, This is really good. Then I stumbled upon a sentence I didn't think he'd wrote (something about the napoleanic wars) and I googled it, thinking I'd half to switch words around so it wouldn't seem plagiarized. Then I find the article, which matches his essay on that era word for word. I do it again, and it turns out he wrote, like, ten sentences of this nine pages. I burn a little inside, and am forced to reword and rewrite the entire report so that it won't be plagiarized. I finished around three in the morning. As you can imagine, I was rather pissed at him.

blarg, now that that's off my chest.
Don't plagiarize, kids.

Anything worth plagarizing is in the public domain by now

PS I used to have teachers who thought I plagarized stuff.

Anything worth plagarizing is in the public domain by now
You can't plagiarize Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle's Work without giving him credit. You can copy it, but you can't try and pass it off as your own. Public domain stuff is no longer under copyright, meaning I can print out a copy of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" Bind it, and sell it if I want (not that I'd be likely to get the price that went into making it) That doesn't mean I can do so and print my own name, rather that that esteemed knight of England's, on the cover.

(PS: I'm making assumptions about english copyright law here witout researching them, because frankly, I don't have time)

PS I used to have teachers who thought I plagarized stuff.
If you were thinking that "public domain" means the ability to pass it off as your own work ... then you were plagerizing

Get this for balls the size of churchbells.

I gave my students an assignment, due three weeks later, to write a short short story, 2-5 pages. We did character studies in class, we worked on plotting, etc.

One student asks me, "But Miss, how will you know if it is our work?"

"What do you mean?"

"How will you know if we wrote the story?"

I get flippant, and say, "I'll know."
"But how?"
"Because I'm an English teacher. I read a lot. I'll know."
He waits a minute. "Do you know Russian authors?"

"I know ALL authors. DON'T DO IT. If I catch you, you'll get a suspension."


Three weeks later, he hands in a story. "The Lottery."

I look in absolute disbelief. "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson is pretty famous -- surely he can't think I am that stupid?

But it's not THAT story....
...and there is NO WAY IN HELL a high school student wrote, "Ivan Dmitritch, a middle-class man who lived with his family on an income of twelve hundred a year and was very well satisfied with his lot, sat down on the sofa after supper and began reading the newspaper."

So I go online and in about a millisecond find out it's Anton Chekhov's "The Lottery Ticket".

Next day in class I give him a chance. "That was some story you handed in.... did you get any help with it?"

"No, miss, it's all mine."

"You didn't, maybe, have some help... because it seems very sophisticated for a high school student....?"

"No. I am very good writer."

"Oh. Well, in that case, you look VERY good for your age."
"What?"
"Seeing as you must be over a hundred years old...."
"What are you...."
"Or perhaps you should get a lawyer, because SOMEONE STOLE YOUR WORK!"
"What? No!"
"Yes! This Anton Chekhov sonuvagun JUMPED IN HIS TIME MACHINE, then he SNUCK INTO YOUR HOUSE, STOLE YOUR WORK AND PUBLISHED IT A CENTURY AGO!"

Even with the proof under his nose, he denied that he plagiarized. It went to my supervisor. Mom came up and cried that this was the first time, it never happened before....

...and one of my colleagues pulled out a letter he had in his files, signed by both mama and son, admitting plagiarism in his class, dated 2 years before.

Yeah. Fun. :-P

snip
Even with the proof under his nose, he denied that he plagiarized. It went to my supervisor. Mom came up and cried that this was the first time, it never happened before....

...and one of my colleagues pulled out a letter he had in his files, signed by both mama and son, admitting plagiarism in his class, dated 2 years before.

Yeah. Fun. :-P
I wish there was an easy way to punish parents who acomplice their studends in breaking school rules like that

Get this for balls the size of churchbells.
Balls the size of? I'd say brains made from with that idiocy!

When I was in college, I was part of the orientation staff. Every year we had long talks with the incoming students about plagiarism, and every year we'd catch a bunch of freshmen who would then start whining how they'd never gotten ANY warning about how this means automatic failures and possible expulsion. :rolleyes:

"You didn't, maybe, have some help... because it seems very sophisticated for a high school student....?"

"No. I am very good writer."

"Oh. Well, in that case, you look VERY good for your age."
"What?"
"Seeing as you must be over a hundred years old...."
"What are you...."
"Or perhaps you should get a lawyer, because SOMEONE STOLE YOUR WORK!"
"What? No!"
"Yes! This Anton Chekhov sonuvagun JUMPED IN HIS TIME MACHINE, then he SNUCK INTO YOUR HOUSE, STOLE YOUR WORK AND PUBLISHED IT A CENTURY AGO!"


I would pay to see this go down in my english class, especially involving some guys I know.

I agree, which is why I avoid them except as a last resort. I haven't had to use it yet, and I don't plan on it. In Creative Writing classes, it's usually less of an issue, although there was a case in our department this year where a student in an entry level fiction workshop turned in a story that was actually the first chapter of a novel available online. She failed and got the transcript mark as well.
I got accused of that my first college class. We had to do a journal deally and so I wrote a crappy little story that I had talked out with my girlfriend at the time. She thought I copied it out of a book, but was dancing around the subject. Once I figured out what she was saying I said, "Thanks for the compliment, but if that's already a book-find it or give me my grade." It was a pretty shitty story, too. Meh...

My friend is also an English teacher who did his masters thesis on Jose Saramago's Blindness and Paul Auster's In the Country of Last Things. He assigned the latter and a student turned in the New York Times review of the book. He wanted to ask, "Didn't you think I might have read this before?" But the student didn't show up after he'd been found out.

He just had another that copy/pasted his paper without much effort to cover at all.

Seriously, even when I'm pressed for time and short on effort, I always write my own work. It might be total bull designed to try and make the teacher think I know what I'm talking about when I haven't really researched it (I don't do this often, but it almost always suceeds) but I can crank out bullshit in only a little more time than it would take to copy and paste. Anyone can copy and paste, but not everyone can hand in a seven page paper they didn't really research and get an A on it. Being able to do that is something I take pride in.

Seriously, even when I'm pressed for time and short on effort, I always write my own work. It might be total bull designed to try and make the teacher think I know what I'm talking about when I haven't really researched it (I don't do this often, but it almost always suceeds) but I can crank out bullshit in only a little more time than it would take to copy and paste. Anyone can copy and paste, but not everyone can hand in a seven page paper they didn't really research and get an A on it. Being able to do that is something I take pride in.
Lol you and me sound simmilar :)

*snip*
This case was easy. She stole her paper from the very page I had used to copy the poem to a handout for the class in the first place. Some are more difficult, but remember--what you can google, we can google.

Not just plagarism, but incredibly lazy plagarism. I think she wanted to be caught. :p

Well, that student is not the first that's for sure.

Get this for balls the size of churchbells. *snip* Yeah. Fun. :-P
I would have paid to have seen that go down.

Funny story..I was accused of plagiarism once, when i forgot to cite MY OWN WORK. Like i had a paper from junior year, so i just copied and pasted some stuff from that in my senior paper. well evidently my teacher used google and found my paper when i posted it on my blog...so yeah she accused me of cheating..i was like wtf..its my own paper..and i had to argue with the idiot for like 30 mins...

Does your blog have your name on it? If not, the teacher won't have any idea that it is *definitively* yours.

Does your blog have your name on it? If not, the teacher won't have any idea that it is *definitively* yours.
Pretty simple ... tell the teacher you will post whatever she says on the blog and have her read it

Example "Yes miss so and so this truly is my blog ... "

Even with the proof under his nose, he denied that he plagiarized. It went to my supervisor. Mom came up and cried that this was the first time, it never happened before....

...and one of my colleagues pulled out a letter he had in his files, signed by both mama and son, admitting plagiarism in his class, dated 2 years before.

Yeah. Fun. :-P
So what happened to the kid?

Similar story with a friend of mine who's a Creative Writing teacher, only the kid stole an Edgar Allen Poe story. Jack calls him into his office, hands him the Poe book, opened to the story, and then proceeds to read the student's story aloud. The kid, I guess figuring he's got no other play than to try to bluff, said "Well isn't that the damndest thing?"

He failed.

So what happened to the kid?

Similar story with a friend of mine who's a Creative Writing teacher, only the kid stole an Edgar Allen Poe story. Jack calls him into his office, hands him the Poe book, opened to the story, and then proceeds to read the student's story aloud. The kid, I guess figuring he's got no other play than to try to bluff, said "Well isn't that the damndest thing?"

He failed.
you gotta give these kids credit for sticking to their lie atleat...I mean, come on. To have the balls to steal from POE, in an English class, and then stick with it...I couldn't do it.

I mean, really. Poe? Everyone knows Poe's style. that would be like taking Faulkner and saying it was yours. It just doesn't work.

So what happened to the kid?

Similar story with a friend of mine who's a Creative Writing teacher, only the kid stole an Edgar Allen Poe story. Jack calls him into his office, hands him the Poe book, opened to the story, and then proceeds to read the student's story aloud. The kid, I guess figuring he's got no other play than to try to bluff, said "Well isn't that the damndest thing?"

He failed.
LOL, that is ballsy!

(I prefer villanelles, Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night" being a prime example [though I'm sure you know what a villanelle is, The Nazz!] They have a similar repetition idea, but the repeated phrases, as opposed to repeated words, create anthemic powerchords of simple phrases)
That's one of my favourite poems, that is.

That's one of my favourite poems, that is.
Ever heard the orchestra piece based off of it? By Elliot Del Borgo

So what happened to the kid?

Failed my class, and in a truly cruel and ironic twist, I was the ONLY teacher assigned to teach the class the following term for the repeaters.

He never showed, and took the class, I am told, in night school.

Meh.

As for those of you who said you wished you were there -- it did end up going down in class -- because he initiated the conversation by insisting on my opinion of "his" work. Right there and then, despite my saying twice I'd rather talk to him privately after class.

*shrug*

It did make quite an impression on the rest of my class -- and has provided me with years of using it as a cautionary tale.

I still get plagiarized papers -- but not nearly as many as I had.

Failed my class, and in a truly cruel and ironic twist, I was the ONLY teacher assigned to teach the class the following term for the repeaters.

He never showed, and took the class, I am told, in night school.

Meh.

As for those of you who said you wished you were there -- it did end up going down in class -- because he initiated the conversation by insisting on my opinion of "his" work. Right there and then, despite my saying twice I'd rather talk to him privately after class.

*shrug*

It did make quite an impression on the rest of my class -- and has provided me with years of using it as a cautionary tale.

I still get plagiarized papers -- but not nearly as many as I had.
I think new teachers will get it the most, only because it is assumed they are naive. Sadly, they are the ones who have read a ton of critical material for the last four years, and will probably know what is going on.

I plan on killing the first one to try it. That'll scare 'em ;)

Pretty simple ... tell the teacher you will post whatever she says on the blog and have her read it

Example "Yes miss so and so this truly is my blog ... "
That would be effective, although I think what would be even more effective would be to actually log in to your blog right before the teacher's eyes.

I plan on killing the first one to try it. That'll scare 'em ;)
Just remember, BoEs tend to frown on the ritualistic killing of students, no matter how deserving the student in question was. ;)

Not just plagarism, but incredibly lazy plagarism. I think she wanted to be caught. :p

Want lazy plagiarism? In tenth grade, there was massive plagiarism in my History class from my fellow classmates. The worst of these were incredibly lazy? How lazy? They found papers online, and printed the WEBPAGE, and handed the web-page printout, ads included, as they're own work. Had the little address at the bottom and everything. To lazy to copy/paste into word. That, my friends, is lazy.

You know the funniest case of plagerism I have heard of was in high school. The kid had taken a paper word for word from the internet and turned it in. By some crazy fluke it was actualy a paper writen by the instructor of that class the site the person copied from even listed the teachers name in everything and the idiot still didn't notice:eek: Some people are really just to stupid:headbang:

Personaly, I take plagerism seriously, both my parent are/were teachers, my mom's a profesor and my dad use to teach high school social sciences. So I have had it drilled into my head that plagersim ws bad since grad school, I can still remember my mom telling me not to copy the answers to questions directly from the text in 3rd grad. This is in part why one of the only two teachers I have had that I would actualy say I really dislike is an English prof that accused me of plagerism on a short paper I did The way they went about accusing me was especialy annoying because it seemed to sugest that the reason that they thought I plagersied it was that I was to stupid to come up with it on my own. That really pissed me off, I know I suck at spelling and grammer, but damn it when I put my mind to it I can do a real nice job on analization, I didn't cheat to get a perfect score on that part of my placement exams. I probably shouldn't be so angry about it since the prof did accept that it was my own work in the end, although I'm sure that has a lot to do with the case I made in the paper she asked me to write on where my work really came from, which included scans of the notes I made along side the text well reading with copies of handwriten papers I had previously given her to confirm the handwriting. I don't know I'm still rather pissed at that, and to give an idea of what it takes to get me to really dislike a teacher the other one was my second grade teacher who made me sit in the front of the room with a large carboard box wraped around my desk so I couldn't see any thing that was going on, her or other students, when I had trouble paying attention in class. That didn't bother me so much at the time, but looking back thats just a fuked up thing to do to a 2nd grader.

Don't teachers have that plagarism checker thingy these days?
Yeah, it's gay.

I can understand why plagiarism is so serious being in college myself now. I consider myself a decent writer and I've been struggling all year to get an A paper from my composition professor and I keep getting A- on all of them. It's really pissing me off. XD Now if I found out someone got an A from plagiarizing while I had my A- after working all night writing, well, they should probably start to run.

It's just underhanded to say, "Oh yeah, I thought of that," when someone else wrote it. I am very proud of my writing and I know I'd be madder than hell to find out someone stole one of my characters or copied an essay I wrote and said it was theirs even if it was just for some stupid busywork assignment. Stealing someone elses work is stealing! Stealing is bad. =P

Slightly off topic, as this is on students cheating off of each other and not plagiarism...

My boyfriend is in the process of getting his teaching credential, so he's been student teaching for the past six months or so. Last semester, he told me a story he heard from one of the other guys student teaching at his school. His friend was a student teacher in English, and gave a test on a play his class had been reading. When he was grading the tests, he noticed that two of the tests were exactly the same. Now, one of the students was Hispanic and didn't speak English very well, the other was white and spoke fluent English. Apparently, the white student had copied his test from the Hispanic student. Word for word, down to the grammar errors, spelling errors, and occasional Spanish word inserted when the Hispanic student couldn't think of the English word. :rolleyes:

How stupid can you get?! :headbang:

Slightly off topic, as this is on students cheating off of each other and not plagiarism...

My boyfriend is in the process of getting his teaching credential, so he's been student teaching for the past six months or so. Last semester, he told me a story he heard from one of the other guys student teaching at his school. His friend was a student teacher in English, and gave a test on a play his class had been reading. When he was grading the tests, he noticed that two of the tests were exactly the same. Now, one of the students was Hispanic and didn't speak English very well, the other was white and spoke fluent English. Apparently, the white student had copied his test from the Hispanic student. Word for word, down to the grammar errors, spelling errors, and occasional Spanish word inserted when the Hispanic student couldn't think of the English word. :rolleyes:

How stupid can you get?! :headbang:

After reading that, I'm not sure I want to know...:eek:

You know the funniest case of plagerism I have heard of was in high school...

There was a very funny one a couple of weeks a go at my school. It was in Latin, and I heard it from a friend of mine who is in the class. The teacher had set a particularly difficult translation. Half, that's right, half of the class looked for it on google. All twelve found the same page, all twelve took the first translation on the page :p So this strict ex-military teacher gets twelve identical copies, and all hell is let loose...

You see, I may have on occasion cheated in such a manner, but at least I havn't been so bloody stupid ;)

Just remember, BoEs tend to frown on the ritualistic killing of students, no matter how deserving the student in question was. ;)
haha....it would only be ritualistic if the student was a virgin and was properly purified first.

was that out loud?

Yeah, it's gay.
don't cheat and you don't have to worry about it. Most of the time, people reading the papers know you cheated before feeding it in. It isn't like they enter every paper they get.

there is also google, which makes life so much easier. As Nazz said, if you can google it, so can we. Not to mention, most of the material is stuff we cover in college courses, and so we're very familiar with critical analysis of it.