Question #7
Plagiarism Tutorial
Plagiarism Tutorial: Welcome
This tutorial is designed to challenge your understanding of plagiarism and the ethical use of sources in academic writing. You will see ten samples of source material and ten corresponding examples of student writing. It is up to you to determine if the student has used each source responsibly.
At the end of this exercise, you will be asked to list three best practices for using sources responsibly. These rules and your results can be shared with your professor.
For more information, see Recognizing & Avoiding Plagiarism.
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“In the peculiar world of textbook publishing, it is commonplace for states to require that their textbooks have a current date, so that parents can be assured that their children are reading up-to-the-minute information. No one, it seems, wants a history textbook that is five years old, even if the revised edition has nothing more than a tacked-on chapter about the events of the past few years and fleeting references to the most recent president. The demand for a recent publication date compels publishers to revise their history textbooks, even if only superficially, every few years. This makes textbooks very expensive to produce and minimizes competition by raising the cost of doing business.”
Ravitch, Diane. The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn. Knopf, 2003.
Student Writing Sample
In a critique of the American textbook industry, Diane Ravitch explains that rules requiring a current date for all textbooks in certain states lead to superficial revisions by publishers and less competition among them because of the costs associated with constantly producing new editions (103-104).