Tim Shearon wrote
> Paul: I'm not so sure I agree with your reasoning. Though it _may_ be
true, it is also possible that the student just did
> not think you'd grade that carefully (i.e., actually look at or know the
source well enough!) and knowingly plagarised the > sentences.
I guess I didn't make the context clear enough. This was the student's
response to a question on my Authorship Assessment, in which _I provide_ the
source paragraph, and she is to paraphrase it. There are three source
paragraphs, printed on the assessment, which they are to paraphrase. The
very point of the assignment is solely to learn to properly paraphrase a
source material, so she _knew_ I would compare her writing with the
original. That's what makes her response so intriguing. Did she really
believe that one of her college-level assignments was to copy a couple of
sentences from a handout to another sheet of paper? What did she think the
purpose of the assignment was? I'm baffled.
> I doubt it was unintentional at all (the teaching her to do it this way, I
mean). I suspect more strongly that this is
> exactly what she may have been taught (assuming we are assuming it wasn't
intentional copying). This is precisely what many > of my students do on
first drafts but they add the "appropriate" quotation marks to muddle the
crime (so to speak). I think > this type of writing is taught (not always
but often) by teachers who themselves have been taught and used this type of
> writing.
That's a distinct possibility, and a damned shame if it's true. Maybe we
should start sitting in on high school English classes to see what's really
going on there (he writes in frustration...).
Paul Smith
Alverno College
Milwaukee
