Unit 2:Plagiarism

Read over each of the following passages, and respond on your own or as a class as to whether or not it uses citations accurately. If it doesn't, what would you do to improve the passage so it's properly cited?

1. Last summer, my family and I traveled to Chicago, which was quite different from the rural area I grew up in. We saw the dinosaur Sue at the Field Museum, and ate pizza at Gino's East.

This statement does not need any citations and is properly stated. They did not put any information from any outside sources.

2. Americans want to create a more perfect union; they also want to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for everybody.

This should be cited because it is a broad statement about Americans. I would add the source I got the information from in brackets at the end of the paraphrase.

3. I find it ridiculous that 57% of high school students think their teachers assign too much homework.

This statement should be either quoted or have a citation at the end because it contains a statistic.

Numbers 4, 5, and 6 all refer to the following passage from Martin Luther King's "Letter from the Birmingham Jail":

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

4. Martin Luther King was certain that nobody would want to be contented with a surfacy type of social analysis that concerns itself only with effects and doesn't deal with root causes.
This is a good paraphrase so it needs to be cited at the end of the statement because they use MLK's ideas in the text.

5. Martin Luther King wrote that the city of Birmingham's "white power structure" left African-Americans there "no alternative" but to demonstrate ("Letter from the Birmingham Jail" para. 5).
This is a good quoted sentence because they begin the source information with marks and end with a citation with a brief reference to the source.

6. In "Letter from the Birmingham Jail," King writes to fellow clergy saying that although they "deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham, your statement fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations."
This is not correctly cited because it doesn't include the brief reference to the source at the end. It needs to have a citation because it has direct quotes from the source.

7. My friend Kara told me that she loves living so close to the ocean.
This has nothing to do with any source and does not have any quotes so it is stated correctly.

8. Americans are guaranteed the right to freely gather for peaceful meetings.

This should be cited because it is a broad statement about Americans. It is also not common knowledge and we don't know where that information came from.

Summary,

In this unit I was able clarify the types of information that needed to be acknowledged and how each citation style should be written out. I already knew a lot of this information because I have taken lots of English classes and read good books about what should be acknowledged. This unit helped me to understand citation through a different perspective and I also learned the COP of citing. In order to keep plagiarism out of the picture for me, I will interpret all of this information into my work and knowledge of others work.

~Kendra~