Electronic Plagiarism Seminar

PREVENTING PLAGIARISM: Writing Stragegies

PREVENTING PLAGIARISM:  The Writing Process

As an educator, you are probably as interested in the process as in the final product (be sure to articulate the goal(s) of the assignment), so you could have students write drafts in class, and hand them in along the way. Ask them to write very short papers often, rather than one long paper due at the end of the semester. (One technique used in a class I took was to pick a topic, write sentences; next week write a paragraph; the following week write a full page; at the end of the semester I handed in a 20-page paper.) 

Plagiarism is most often the result of panic when faced with a last-minute paper to write, so getting the students started on the process early avoids that  reason. 

Make the topic of the paper a response to a specific question.

Make the topic very current.

Require that the paper address some discussion or readings from the class.

Don't let students write about "anything." Give them specific topics, and change the topics each semester.

Let students know that you know about the paper mill sites, and also that you know of web sites designed to help you catch plagiarism. 

Most of the sources used in the papers from paper mills are very old, so current references should be required and looked for. 

Show students a bad paper from a paper mill: analyze it in class, use it to teach them how to write a good paper (or how to identify a good one to plagiarize?). Most of these papers are not very good, so critiquing it in class will bring that home. Encourage them by letting them know you think they could do better.
Talk about quality control, lack of guarantees, and the fact that a paper got an A from one professor is no guarantee that it will from another (if in fact it did, and why would you believe that?).

Maas writes about his paraphrasing clinics for students at Wiley College, using E Prime, but his work is no longer available on the Internet. For a presentation about this concept, please see Herbert's "English prime as an instructional tool in writing classes." at http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/vols/vol41/no3/p26.htm (I find this approach fascinating--like learning Klingon!)

This page was created on 2 December 1999 and last updated on 23 March 2005.