PLAGIARISM:

One of the main problems facing both new and returning students at college is how to write in your own words. When you have an essay due in, you’re short of time, you’re not really sure what the tutor wants… it’s all too easy to be tempted to copy from the internet, books or other people’s work.

Remember, though – your tutors have read hundreds of assessments… and we will know if it’s not your own work!

The Write Now project has been set up to help undergraduate students in psychology to develop their own writing skills – you can access a really useful presentation here.

Here are some further tips on how to avoid plagiarism:

• Don’t copy chunks of text from a published source into your essays or reports. If you want to use someone else’s words, quote them and cite your source.
• Don’t pass off ideas which come from other people as yours. Again cite your sources. The implicit assumption in a piece of work is that unless you have given a name and date to back up something you say, then you are presenting your won ideas.
• Don’t make notes from books by copying out sections of text. If you come back to your notes after a few weeks, you might completely forget that you have literally copied, and convince yourself that the words are your own. Suddenly you find yourself slotting that text into your own work, and thus you accidentally plagiarise. Instead, read something, think about it, understand it, put it away, and make some notes out of your head.
• Don’t try to avoid plagiarism by copying out a piece of text and altering some of the words. Usually this still constitutes a breach of the rules. Write things in your own words. However, it is perfectly acceptable to use certain words when they are the only words to describe something. If a text you have read refers to ‘lexical decision tasks’, ‘fragment completion paradigms’ or ‘photophobia’, for example, don’t try to paraphrase these special jargon terms. It is quite acceptable to use phrases like these without using quotation marks” (Forshaw, 2004 p76)

REFERENCES:

Forshaw, M (2004) Your Undergraduate Psychology Project: A BPS Guide Blackwell Publishing.