PLAGIARISM

Guidelines on Plagiarism and Cheating

Your English teachers take plagiarism very seriously. Please read the following guidelines, which are intended to guide you through your university career, carefully. As junior members of the academic community it is important that you understand what is meant by plagiarism and how you can successfully avoid it.

Plagiarism can be generally defined as the copying of material or ideas produced by someone else without due acknowledgement. Although there are many forms of plagiarism regarding all types of sources and media, in our courses plagiarism can arise when students copy the language or ideas of another person, submit another person’s work as their own and, most commonly, cut and paste information from internet sources.

Competent academic writing should contain reference to the works of others as this demonstrates that you have researched the subject. Nonetheless, there must be no doubt as to what is your own original work and what has been taken from the work of others. Acknowledgement should be obvious to the reader in the form of quotation marks, footnotes, or in-text citation, for example. Your teacher will explain the appropriate ways to cite properly someone else’s material which you have chosen to use as support within your own written work. You may also be required to upload your work to compilatio.net, a software programme used by the University of Florence which analyses written work and can detect the sources from information in its database.

The link below from Purdue University clarifies the various kinds of plagiarism and contains advice about how to avoid it by acknowledging sources properly. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/01/

Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) is used by the English Department as a reference source for academic writing. Your teacher may ask you to consult certain sections.

Plagiarism is also considered by many as a form of cheating. You must be aware that cheating in written exams is not tolerated. Any evidence of copying from other sources (books, notes or the internet) during a class exam or when a teacher is subsequently grading the exam will have serious repercussions for the candidate involved.

Instances of what amounts to blatant plagiarism or cheating in exams will be dealt with severely and failure to respect and conform to our standards with a disregard to academic integrity will lead to your course marks being annulled.

If you require any further clarification or have any queries you should contact one of your teachers.