Thursday, May 25, 2006

At least they're getting the message about plagiarism

I guess I frightened them. Because this time around, not only are my students freaking out about whether they have accidentally collaborated on their assignments when they weren't looking, but they are citing everything possible, left, right and all over the margins.

One student in particular has made heavy use of the textbook and lecture notes when composing his answers, but this time at least he has paraphrased rather than copying, and after each sentence he has added in parentheses: "according to the textbook" or "according to Dr ScaryLecturer last Wednesday".

But my absolute favourite spot is where he writes:

"The third word in this example sentence is a preposition (according to me, anyway)."*

Guess he couldn't find a "citation" for that one.

_____________
* I'm considering patenting this form of reference and using it heavily in my thesis. I'm thinking of calling it the fuck you approach to stating your sources.


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5 Comments:

Anonymous said...

StyleyGeek strikes again. With devastating humor for my Thursday morning!

(also have you considered that you are well on your way to becoming your own version of ScaryLecturer seeing as you scared them so?)

StyleyGeek said...

No! Argh!

Nicola said...

But yes! I think you should go undercover to find out whether they don't call you ScaryTutor :-)

StyleyGeek said...

I think that's pretty much what the evaluations are for :)

Anonymous said...

Yes! Even as a graduate student I had one teacher that constantly asked for our sources--even if the sentence began with an "I think." I finally just started putting footnotes "this one's mine" and citing myself--heck, if Walter Ong can do it, so can I!