Plagiarism Fears
Plagiarism is not giving credit, when credit is due. It is taking someone else’s words or idea and stating them as your own. The readings and websites were great refreshers reminding me about rules I learned in primary and secondary schools. I do not worry about citing information correctly, but my biggest fear is making sure that I site it. I have, in the past, used quotes in papers and forgot to put in the citation. I also fear that I will not correctly paraphrase the information. The Purdue website gave some helpful tips on how to correctly paraphrase. I liked the suggestion Purdue gave about reading the information, writing it on note card, then referring back to the text to make sure it is not exactly the same.
Something I found interest while reading is how to take notes while reading over information pertaining to your topic. I normally write on the top of the printed article what is inside that I want to use in my paper. I like how Purdue said to make note cards with a keyword at the top to help me know where to use in my paper. They also suggested placing the source on the card. I believe this is going to be very useful during my research.
As I begin research on my topic, I find it is hard to paraphrase the facts. In the SLP world, we study evidence-based practices (EBP). EBPs are studies that have been conducted with results proving or disproving a treatment works. It is easy to summarize the results of a study, but I find it hard to paraphrase how the study was conducted without using quotations.
I have not had any horror stories in the past, nor have I heard of any stories.
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Tori,
I bet it’s frustrating in your field not being able to easily paraphrase particular parts of the articles. I know that in Sociology it’s really easy to paraphrase except when it comes to the data and measuring the variables, because really how can you paraphrase a math problem?! You’re lucky that you don’t have any horror stories too!
I’m definitely going to do what Purdue said about the notecards! You can never be too safe when it comes to paraphrasing correctly, especially when our grade and money depend on it!!!
Tori,
Keith has been replying to your posts, but they aren’t showing up. I’ll see if we can’t figure out what’s happening with that.
Anyway, the Purdue system of notetaking is the system I used throughout all of my education, from my first undergraduate paper to my dissertaion to a textbook. I have boxes of notecards from those projects. The system that Purdue suggests was required at Maryville College, where I did my undergraduate degree. Once I started writing papers that way, I couldn’t do it any other way. Of course, back then we didn’t have computers or the internet. there was no temptation to copy and paste.
I agree that sometimes certain parts of research are particularly difficult to paraphrase. However, for the most part, the details of each study don’t need to be written in a great deal of detail in a paper. What’s usually most important is what was concluded. Therefore, rather than going into a tremendous amount of detail on methods, you might be able to say something like, “In a clinical study of 45 children suffering from apraxia of speech, So-And-So (year) concluded bla bla bla.” Generally the details of a study don’t need to be explained in a term paper unless it’s YOUR methods for a study YOU are conducting or unless there is something methodologically unique that you want the reader to understand.