Copyright and Plageriasm

Both copyright and plagiarism are one of the controversial issues that face intellectuals in universities, especially teachers of 101 courses. The problem is that publishers put restrictions on the amount of material researchers can use, which constitutes a source of difficulty and challenge for students who are always required to do research and make response papers for the material they take in their classes. These students will also be confronted with the fact that they should sift other sources to build their arguments and provide a sophisticated discourse that meets the requirements of academic standards, as they believe. DeVoss and Rosati argue that

they feel that assembling sources, citations, and quotes is the primary goal of writing a paper—and that their original ideas are secondary…Students may stumble toward plagiarism when they fail to cite properly because they don’t entirely understand the point or argument of a primary work, or in a struggle to define what “common knowledge” means, they struggle to identify which information merits a citation.

In spite of all what was said in the readings and in spite of the fact that writing occurs in a discourse the elements of which are articulated in a way that makes it possible that each element affects it, I do believe that out teaching practices inside classrooms exacerbate plagiarism and copyright problems that our students encounter.

As teachers, we always confuse our students with the myth of academic discourse vs. home discourse. We always tell them that they should use a sophisticated language, one that they do not use in their daily home discourse. This split, in my point of view, drives students to believe that their lexical repertory and rhetorical power are vulgar and feeble and that they should go through other sources to ameliorate their writing. In so doing, students will fall victims of a cut/paste process by borrowing phrases, sentences and sometimes paragraphs to meet the requirements. In fact, composition teachers should understand that in both discourses (home and academic) students can engage in conversations by posing arguments and counterarguments and providing evidences.

In addition, the type of assignments that we give to our students may negatively contribute to the problem. Although writing is a creative process in which people unleash their imagination and ideas, teachers tend to ask students to write papers by answering one or two questions, which, I think, restrict students’ imaginative and speculative abilities. Reluctantly students will try to visit websites and other sources to do the assignments, which will make them commit the same mistake (plagiarism and violating copyright laws) It will be more practical for teachers to engage students in symbolic-analytic work which should push students to sort and synthesize information(Johnson-Eilola).

Finally, since our teaching practices are part of writing, we need to change them to cope with our postmodern era and our technological advancement. As teachers of composition, we should criticize and correct ourselves before we blame our economical and ideological practices.