Before reading the journal “Plagiarism Pentimento” by Rebecca Moore Howard, the term plagiarism was very unclear to me. I did not really know the actual meaning of plagiarism. In this journal, author talked about the definition of the term plagiarism. She began to talk and went deeper into the plagiarism and came to the conclusion that the students did not always steal people’s idea but they were “patchwriting”. Plagiarism is the practice of taking someone else’s idea and passing them off as own idea. Plagiarism is not a new problem but it is a serious issue. It was very uncertain to me. In ” but I Changed Three Words:Plagiarism in ESL Classroom” Makiko talked about her experience about how she had been caught for copying a essay of her professor and how she got kicked out from college for two years. Whereas in “Plagiarism Pentimento” Rebecca Moore Howard stated about the acts that could be considered as a plagiarism. One is by borrowing someone else’s ideas and informations without documenting the source and the second one is by paraphrasing someone else’s ideas too closely without using any quotation marks which is totally considered as a plagiarism.
I was taking it very easily and did not even feel to know about it because I did not really care about the writing at that time. However, after reading these two journals, I came to know that Plagiarism is a serious issue on writing. Also, ARC’s policy also helped me to be aware about the plagiarism while writing essays or any other writings. In my opinion, American River College Plagiarism Policy should be revised to be more lenient to basic writing students. Because it is very important to teach about the plagiarism flexibility for ESL students and for those international students who come to the United States from other countries. Many other countries like India, Japan, China and other Asian countries do not allow plagiarism because they take it as a serious crime and if they caught by doing so, it could be lead to a serious punishment. Some countries counts plagiarism as a disrespect to their professors. Asian countries like China teaches their students about the reason why the teachers should be respected in any way. Likewise, I believe it is very important to teach students about the plagiarism and how it could be avoided.
The very first reason why ARC’s policy needs to be more lenient is because many people still are very unaware about the plagiarism policy and they always make a mistake by taking someone else’s idea and passing them off as their own idea. They do not see the significance of plagiarism before writing. Some of the student writers do grab ideas from someone else’s writing and change it by rewording words and sentences. I found that a very good and respectable way to write a essay because student can learn so many things as it help students to enlightened their arguments and phrases. It also helps students to understand each and every words and sentences about what they are writing. So, I think by revising ARC’s Plagiarism Policy, it will help student to know the meaning of plagiarism. Because understanding plagiarism is the first step to avoiding it. Also sometimes, people are inclined to use someone else’s ideas. Rebecca has mentioned that some students makes minor changes which is also counted as a plagiarism. Students think they are just doing a patchwriting. But they actually are doing plagiarism and they don’t realize that they are doing a plagiarism.
There are so many reasons why people do plagiarism. The very first reason why people do plagiarism is because they do not exactly know what plagiarism is and how it works. And the another reason is because they never learned about it have not been taught about it in their younger ages. Some students do it intentionally and some people do it unintentionally. However, it is very important to teach a detail information to the student who have been speaking and learning English as a second language. I think there are so many ways to stop plagiarism. Allowing students to rewrite the paper for a better grade is also a good way to improve plagiarism. Many people do not know what plagiarism actually is. But in my experience, I found it so useful because it also helps people to build up the power of brain memory. Even though, I got little amount of plagiarism in my past experiences, it helped me to paraphrase the words before I do plagiarism.
The main lessons that writers has been talking about in the articles, “But I Changed Three Words: Plagiarism in the ESL Classroom” and “Plagiarism Pentimento” is that plagiarism will not be tolerated in any way. Plagiarism directly makes a negative changes in individual people’s life which is receiving considerable attention in schools, colleges and even in the media. These days, peoples are grabbing a minor ideas from someone else’s writing if it inspires them. So, it is very important to teach them about a negative impacts of plagiarism that might be raised in their writings. Students must be clearly aware about the plagiarism policies.
In conclusion, I do agree that American River College Plagiarism policy needs to be revised to be more lenient to basic writing students. Because each and every college students needs to be know and learn about the plagiarism policy since it is a very serious issue and students are also very unaware about it. The main things what students itself needs to know is not to wait until the last due date because after that the easy way that students choose to complete their essay on time is by copying someone else idea and pretends as their owns. Therefore, sometimes students don’t really want to plagiarize but they do it unintentionally. So it is very important to realize students that they are doing plagiarism so that they would be aware about this serious issue.
