Sunday, September 28, 2008
How dumb do students think we are?
I have just finished "correcting" the essay of one of my students. A blatant example of plagiarism. She contributed a grand total of 9 words (3 of which are link words from a list of link words I gave the students - the other 6 form a poorly put together mockery of English). 95% of her essay comes from one website and is taken word for word from it, the rest comes from another website - again taken word for word. It is so blaringly obvious when a student does this. I read one sentence and know it wasn't written by them. And yet, it is the 5th case in just a year of teaching. The worst part is: I warn them! I tell them litterally "if you try and plagiarize, I will know it, and you will get a zero". And they go ahead and do it...
Do they seriously think we won't be able to tell? Or that because we're slightly older than they are (in this case I'm barely 3 years older than the student) it means we're inane at anything technical and we can't do a google search?
I seriously don't get it... And it seriously annoys the heck out of me. GAH. Damn them!
For good measure, the cartoon is taken from www.pyrczak.com/antiplagiarism/images/Trent48.gif.
# posted by V @ 6:58 PM 
