Week 12 Assignment

Plagiarism Assignment:

Passage 1.

I would give this an 'F' grade, this is because the passage correctly shows that they were taking from another work, however, they distort the author's message. This student only takes the quotes that speak favorably about Jefferson while the author clearly means to show the paradoxical nature of Thomas Jefferson's life. This means that to take the positive aspects without the other side of the coin is changing the author's message.

Passage 2.

This one was difficult, after deliberation I would give this a grade of 'G'. I would possibly give this an 'H', but I fail to see how the sources relate in an exceptionally meaningful way. The student makes the comparison of Jefferson and Washington both having an ideal of freedom, but wouldn't free slaves, however this touches on the argument, it does not fully realize it.

Passage 3.

I give this passage a 'D', this is because although there is a works cited, you cannot easily tell where the student's voice comes in vs. when he's using the author's work. The entire passage is a long amalgamate of the students ideas and the authors.

Passage 4.

I give this passage a grade of 'A' this is because there is no citation, or mention of an author's ideas in the work despite copying their work verbatim. Furthermore, the student seems to try and weave the author's work into their own to make it look as if they had that idea.

Passage 5.

This passage gets an 'H', this is because the student clearly separates the author's work from their own, mentioning the author whenever they refer back to their work. The work is cited both in-text, and in the works cited portion. Furthermore, the student adds to the author's argument and applies it in a contemporary context.

Self-Plagiarism Paragraph.

The impressions I had of this issue is one of high contention in the scientific community, a blurry issue with serious ramifications that may impact a career due to not being a fully incorporated idea. I haven't heard anything about self-plagiarism in college, however the most self-plagiarism I have done personally is to essentially save a template for lab reports, so I can rewrite over the template I have already created. I do not believe this necessarily constitutes self-plagiarism as I have never really copied entire portions, more like my lab reports come out looking more uniform. I think this is a very controversial issue due to the belief of intellectual property belonging to those who created it. Just as if I created a tool and made several of the same copy of something with different parts, many would believe that self-plagiarism is nothing more than reusing their own intellectual property. This can create issues when methods are copied from a previous paper, but results changed. Overall, I do not have a huge problem with self-plagiarism, but I can understand how it could be possible to create issues in the scholarly world.