Can Paraphrasing Practice Help Students Define Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is the new dirty word on campus, and college instructors are increasingly interested in teaching students how to prevent committing plagiarism. In this study, college students wrote definitions of plagiarism before and after 6 weeks of practice paraphrasing and citing original sources. Students' definitions of plagiarism were evaluated for content and inclusion of specific elements of plagiarism. Results indicated a significant increase in post-paraphrasing plagiarism definition scores compared with pre-paraphrasing definition scores. In particular, all students were likely to include the notion "taking someone else's words is plagiarism" in both their pre-paraphrasing and post-paraphrasing definitions. After paraphrasing practice, however, students were more likely to include two additional specific elements of plagiarism in their post-paraphrasing definitions (taking someone else's ideas is plagiarism and not giving credit is plagiarism). The importance of having students practice paraphrasing techniques, rather than merely teaching them definitions of plagiarism, is discussed. The methods used in this study could be easily adapted to virtually any course in which the instructor wishes to help students understand plagiarism. (Contains 2 figures and 2 notes.)