Keeping Essays Plagiarism-Free

Every year, schools and universities keep their eye to the growing number of plagiarism cases occurred in their institution. This is evident in every class as more students resort in copying old papers or hiring essay writing service to do their essays, research papers and other forms of academic papers. Defined as grabbing an information or idea from another person or resource, plagiarism isn’t really as equal as cheating in newspaper writing but not in case of  academic writing.

Educators has greater power to make their classrooms plagiarism-free. Keeping their students informed of what plagiarism is all about should be the first step. It will be helpful if teachers will show examples of plagiarized works and papers. Next step is to tell their students they can easily detect plagiarized works. There are ways teachers can do so. One of which is using programs or software to check essays and research papers whether they are original or not. Aside from that, they can use Google and other search engines to check some snippets if they came from a plagiarized paper. They can also use the library database to do so. It also helps if students understand the policy of the school about plagiarism in order for them not to commit in doing so.

The question now is how will teachers prevent students in doing plagiarism. They can:

1. Change essay topics every semester – this way, there is no possibility a student can recycle old essays for their own benefit.
2. Assign essay topics that requires actual analysis – example of which requires students compare two issues, philosophical thinking or anything under the sun.
3. Create essay topics that is unusual – to avoid “canned papers”  assign a topic that has a different attack on a certain subject. For instance, if the topic is about Indian literature per se, make it  “The Cultural Effects of Indian Literature in the world”.
4. Make sure that the essays are mailed – it is easier to check in plagiarism sites or search engine if the essay is in email but be sure that they hand you a hard copy for reference.

It will also helps if students know how to cite a resource. Citation is the only way a person can use other person’s idea whether it comes from books, journals and even the net. There are many styles of citation but there are two commonly used style, the MLA and APA citations. In this way, students will learn the proper way of using information as well as they won’t bear the shame of committing plagiarism. 
 
  About the Author:

Marianne Brooks is a freelance writer who enjoys her work tremendously. Since she works from home, she has seen her cost-of-living expenses gone down significantly since she does not need to travel and spend on gas anymore. She specializes in essay writing, book report and travelogues and everything that is related to essay. She and her husband are volunteers of US Red Cross.