Re: question re using citations

[Felicia Mitchell <fmitchel@ehc.edu>]

I'm trying to think of a polite way to talk about this problem without
pointing fingers at the faculty members who may encourage writing without
proper documentation.  One thing I've done here via my duties as chair of
our acadamic standards committee is a small (perhaps boring) presentation
about guidelines on academic honesty for faculty members.  Another thing I
try to do is stress citation systems and academic honesty at WAC workshops.
And of course all students in 101 do learn the proper way to use information
(we hope).  Nonetheless, I still am haunted now and then by papers such as
the one you describe.  For example, once a very good student brought a paper
to me because she wanted to learn to be a better writer.  She was making
good grades but genuinely curious about how to excel.  She brought a graded
paper from a class (discipline to remain anonymous).  It had an A.  "Well,"
I said, "I'd have to say that the first thing we'd say in an English class
is that this is a great example of plagiarism."  (That's a difficult issue
because we're never supposed to undermine a professor's authority, so I've
been told, but I've figured ways to work around it.) And we went from there.
It was essentially a long paraphrase from some encyclopedia.  Another time,
a student brought a paper for feedback on grammar (editing only), and I
said, "Well, I don't feel comfortable dealing with the sentence-level errors
yet because you essentially have an academically dishonest paper.  Let me
tell you how to fix it."  I train tutors to do this too, but I'm sure many
papers may just slip through.  (That's just one reason we keep tight written
records about exactly what goes on in a tutorial session.)  So what do we do
with the problem?  I think WAC workshops are a good idea because we get
people thinking about assignments and about their responsibilities.  If
someone makes up a good assignment, the student will be less likely to make
a patchwork quilt of a paper out of paraphrases, etc.  Well, I could go on
and on, perhaps because today in advanced expos. we did a big
comparison/contrast of all the different citation systems and also spent
time talking about how writers for general audiences (who do not necessarily
use parenthetical citations) give credit where credit is due.  But I'll stop
with these reflections and look forward to what others have to say.   (I
guess the gist of my answer is that the one way to deal with the problem is
to deal with the source, the faculty, by training people to make responsible
assignments.)


At 11:24 AM 2/6/97 -0600, you wrote:
>Group,
>
>With increasing frequency, students from a varity of disciplines bring 
>papers to the center with no citations for information gathered from 
>secondary sources.  When I ask about the absence of citations, these 
>students say they are required to have only a "bibliography" page at 
>the end.  I feel compelled to tell them they're being academically 
>dishonest and urge them to check again with their professors.  Most 
>students are vehement in the assertion that citations aren't required.  
>Often the students have actually quoted passages using quotation marks; 
>sometimes, though, the prose sounds more academic in certain places than 
>in others, yet no quotation marks are present.  When I ask about 
>"paraphrasing," students say, "Yes, I changed it up."
>
>I don't want to be a party to plagiarism; but pressing students about 
>such matter sreally aggravates many of them.  Have any of you encountered 
>these situations with any consistency?  What do you consider our duty as 
>writing center professionals?    
>
>Mary Nell Kivikko
>M.Kivikko@tcu.edu
>
Dr. Felicia Mitchell
Department of English
Emory & Henry College
P.O. Box 947
Emory, VA 24327-0947
PHONE: (540) 944-6225
FAX: (540) 944-6880
E-MAIL:  fmitchel@ehc.edu
HOME PAGE: www.chre.vt.edu/coe/projects/ACA/lang_lit/mitchell/felicia_p.htm