Plagiarism

Wikipedia (2008) states that“Plagiarism is the use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work”. As a student, this is an issue because you are often asked to produce an assignment, essay or presentation that:

• Demonstrates you know what has already, been said and written on a topic..


• Demonstrates that you can develop an idea based on what has already been said and written and write something new and original.


• Discuss the opinions of experts and authorities on a topic and defend / disagree with those opinions.

List adapted from:
Purdue University OWL (2008).

At the very least it would be pretty silly to ignore all the knowledge and information that has been developed in the past when you are writing up an assignment or presentation.

To avoid plagiarism, when completing written work, you must indicate where the information/ideas/words you have used came from. This is called referencing or citing your sources. There are many ways to reference material and different subjects and institutions have their own ways of doing it. See for example
http://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/about/sis/sis_refstyles.htm.
http://www.waikato.ac.nz/library/learning/s_refstyles.shtml.
http://library.canterbury.ac.nz/services/ref/apa/index.shtml


The two most common are APA (American Psychological Association) and Harvard.
As you move from year 9 to year 13 the referencing you do should become closer to international standards. At the very least you must provide a list (bibliography) of all the sources that you used in an assignment in a consistent format. This list is on a separate page at the end of your work. If in doubt ask the teacher requesting the work.

References.
Purdue University OWL. Avoiding plagiarism. Available on line: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/01/ [2008, December 6th].

Wikipedia. Plagiarism. Available online: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism [2008, December 6th].

G Lancaster