Reflective Essay on Plagiarism
Assignment Description:
Compose a reflective essay on plagiarism. This type of essay is primarily designed for you to express
your own views and feelings on a topic rather than to prove a thesis. In particular this essay should
document how your views on plagiarism have changed from before your taking this class to now when
you have been shown several examples of plagiarism and the reasons for including proper citation.
This essay should only be based on the writer view of the subject plagiarism, and should be written in the
first person and should also be critically reflective.
Reflective Essay on Plagiarism
Prior to my attendance of this class, I had come to believe that plagiarism was just another means
of making education more rigorous and effort-intensive for students. It thought it was simply put
in place to make the academic process so to say ‘steeper’ for participants. The reason for this is
the fact that the steps necessary to avoid plagiarism include citation and also list all references.
After this lesson I have however developed a different view of plagiarism as well as expanded
my view on what it constituted. I didn’t know for instance that paraphrasing on its own was not
sufficient as a means of avoiding plagiarism. A text is still technically plagiarized so long as the
author has not made any deliberate effort to recognize the original author of the concepts
presented. Rather than complicate academia, the effort against plagiarism is actually meant to
ensure fairness in the educational fields and also encourage students to come up with their own
material where possible through empirical research or other laid down procedures (Blum, 2011).
Last but not least, I believe it is important to register my concern with respect to the electronic
monitoring of plagiarism. The softwares used often give a percentage and different academic
institutions impose varying thresholds for their students. It makes me abit curious about what
this implies to the quality of information generated before the widespread adaptation of the
internet. The internet’s accessibility also means that the available information is likely to be
recycled at a higher rate begging the question about what this will imply for the current systems
of plagiarism inspection or investigation.
References
Blum, S. D. (2011). My word!: Plagiarism and college culture. Cornell University Press.
