We are in Seattle for my nephew’s graduation and I will pull together some photos and thoughts regarding this adventure soon.\u00a0 For now, I will post here my newspaper article from last week.\u00a0 It’s certainly nothing profound, but I guess it does remind me of the effects of The Fall and how tempting it is to take short cuts and tell lies:<\/p>\n\n\n
It is May and I have wrapped up my\ngrading of research papers just in time to tackle final exams.\u00a0 In my last article I shared my perception\nthat research papers are even less popular with English teachers than with the\nstudents, due to the time and mental energy consumed by the evaluation\nprocess.\u00a0 (This is when I dream of being\na gym teacher.)\u00a0 To be done properly,\neach 5 or 6 page paper I receive requires not only grading with a fairly\ncomplex rubric, but also a healthy dose of detective work. \u00a0I have to be on guard against plagiarism.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u00a0At the heart of the research paper assignment\nlie fundamental cognitive skills undeniably worthy of several weeks of class\ntime:\u00a0 analyzing the words and ideas of\nothers, processing them accurately, and then synthesizing them into a coherent\nand independent piece of writing.<\/p>\n\n\n
Plagiarism is a short cut which\nbypasses all that is worthwhile about the research paper.<\/p>\n\n\n
My students are generally honest\nand hardworking, but in the age of the internet, the temptation to steal\nanother person\u2019s words or ideas has never been greater, and the means to do so\nnever easier:\u00a0 a simple copy and paste\njob can add multiple paragraphs to an anemic paper. And just like that, the\nfive page minimum is within reach.<\/p>\n\n\n
Fortunately, spotting the most\nblatant plagiarism is actually fairly easy.\u00a0\u00a0\nOnce I received a paper where all the plagiarized paragraphs were\nprinted in a recognizably different font.\u00a0\nAnd in blue.\u00a0 Another time I\nreceived a short story in which my Hoosier student had unexplainably picked up the\nBritish penchant for spelling \u201ccolor\u201d as \u201ccolour\u201d and \u201cfavorite\u201d as \u201cfavourite\u201d,\netc.\u00a0 But even when there aren\u2019t such obvious\nsigns, it is not terribly difficult for me to recognize the difference in\nwriting style and vocabulary between a high school sophomore and someone with a\nPhD.\u00a0 Finding the proof becomes the\ntime-consuming part.<\/p>\n\n\n
The funniest thing about plagiarism\nis that it is always \u201caccidental\u201d.\u00a0\nAlways.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u00a0I caught a rough draft a few years ago that\nwas entirely a free paper found online.\u00a0\n(Apparently, some students don\u2019t realize that I can Google too.)\u00a0 When confronted, this student stared at the\npaper in disbelief a brief moment and then explained, \u201cI can\u2019t believe my\nfriend did this to me.\u00a0 I gave her my handwritten\nrough draft to type since I don\u2019t have a computer.\u00a0 She must have run out of time and just\nprinted this out with my name on top.\u00a0\nI\u2019m sorry \u2013 I should have looked at it before I turned it in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cWho was this friend?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t know her; she goes to\nEast.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
I was impressed.\u00a0 An \u201cF\u201d for analyzing, processing and\nsynthesizing, but an \u201cA+\u201d for impromptu creative storytelling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We are in Seattle for my nephew’s graduation and I will pull together some photos and thoughts regarding this adventure soon.\u00a0 For now, I will post here my newspaper article from last week.\u00a0 It’s certainly nothing profound, but I guess it does remind me of the effects of The Fall and how tempting it is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10279,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10278\/revisions\/10279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}