Chapter 9: CCC It Wasn't Me, Was It?: Plagiarism On The Web

Citation: Danielle DeVoss, Annette C. Rosati, “‘It wasn’t me, was it?’ Plagiarism and the Web.” Computers and Composition, Volume 19, Issue 2, August 2002, Pages 191-203

Reading and Thinking  

Plagiarism is a tricky thing, and it is an ever-present battle in the English classroom. I enjoyed the article, because the authors gave a practical insight into situations teachers have encountered. As well, I agree with the authors in that multiple reasons exist for plagiarism and we must realize that not all of those reasons are out of pure intent to plagiarize or laziness.

The article also prompted me to wonder how much plagiarism has gone up since the internet has spread.  Copy/pasting and obtaining papers via online services is so easy to access from the web. But, really, a lot of students plagiarize because of lack in confidence. They don’t think that they can say it well enough, so they’ll just take it from someone else.

Writing in with confidence would be a wonderful conversation/example for the classroom discussion. If online sources are to be used, students need to learn what makes them credible enough to use in academic assignments.