Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Topic: Plagiarism

10-Second Review: In preventing student plagiarism, don’t forget to value students’ ideas.

Title: “The Scarlet P: Plagiarism, Panopticism, and the Rhetoric of Academic Integrity.” Sean Zwagerman. College Composition and Communication (June 2008), 676-710. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Summary: Suggests that the teacher’s valuing students’ ideas is the spirit that will defeat the temptation to plagiarize.

Comment: It’s not that simple, but this attitude on the part of the teacher is basic to successful writing by students and might cause them not to need to plagiarize. The author’s question after successfully trapping a student plagiarist, “Why did he need to do it?” is worth thinking about. RayS.

The purpose of this blog is to share interesting ideas I have found in recent American professional publications dealing with the teaching of English at all levels, elementary, secondary and college.

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