Plagiarism should be Given Greater Attention at Secondary and Tertiary Level Education in Dominica

Indiana University Bloomington –School of Education- (IUB) continues to place great emphasis on 'preparing education, advancing knowledge, and empowering the education' of its students. In fact, one of many critical areas within the writing process is plagiarism, meaning, using other people's work without giving proper acknowledgement/ referencing for their work, and the goal of IUB has always been to educate students of the need to know 'how to recognize plagiarism.'

IUB gives a clear definition between two types of plagiarism: 'Word-for-word' and 'Paraphrasing plagiarism'. According to IUB, a word-for-word example of plagiarism is one in which 'the writer directly quotes a passage or passages from an author's work without the use of proper quotation marks.' Paraphrase plagiarism, on the other hand, is 'a condensed version of another author's work, or putting the author's words into your own words.' Paraphrase must be cited.

We who are engaged in the writing process may have used the ideas of others un-knowingly or may have been tempted at times to use ideas or thought patterns of other writers without the use of proper quotation marks. This is not the best practice. It is, therefore, necessary that every one of us provide proper referencing to the work of other writers whenever we use it. If not, we are committing a crime of plagiarism.

In this regard, I would like to encourage all schools (from the Secondary- First Form level to Tertiary level) to put the necessary programmes or data-base in place to help inform students of the danger of the practice of plagiarism. As a society, we generally think of drug-use and alcohol-use by students in our schools as destructive, but the practice of plagiarism is just as detrimental to our students like drugs and alcohol. Too many times, students find it easy to copy and space from the internet especially when they are given research papers and they do so without proper referencing from the work of other writers.

For those who may not be aware, plagiarism is a form of cheating and students are heavily penalized especially at the University level. As a society, why do we wait so long to teach students of the destructiveness of the practice of plagiarism? In fact, it is very easy to plagiarize.

We do it without even being aware of it and that's one of the reasons I try my utmost best to put in proper quotation the ideas that are not my own in my short articles. Therefore, plagiarism should be given greater attention at our secondary and tertiary level education in Dominica.