Priscilla, Alvin, Aaman – Group Activity 1
Is this plagiarism or not?
- Directions: Read the following scenarios and decide whether it is a case of plagiarism or not. (Y or N) and explain why.
__N__ 1. Kyoko needs to write a report on American politics. She looks up Barack Obama in Wikipedia and discovers he is the 44th president of the United States. She includes this information in her report but doesn’t mention Wikipedia.
This doesn’t count as plagiarism because even if she didn’t mention that she learned that Barack Obama is the 44th president of the United States, this would be considered common knowledge.
__Y__2. Tam is writing a paper on a novel for his English class. Since the whole class is reading the same book, he doesn’t need to use a citation.
This would still count as plagiarism because you would still need to follow citation guidelines for any essay.
__Y__3. Sugi wrote a paper for his European history class last semester and got an A on the paper. This semester, his Political Science class is addressing some of the same issues that are in his History paper. He checks with his professor first who agrees with Sugi, so he uses the material from his History paper.
It counts as active plagiarism as it is not appropriate to not cite your old work and use the same ideas for your current task.
__Y__4. Ramiro, Stephan, April, and Chris are working on a group project. Chris submits his work and the others suspect that some of it came from the Internet, but it sounds good, so they submit it.
This counts as plagiarism because the group members should’ve double-checked their information and cited any sources.
__Y__5. Maria finds a lot of good information for her paper on the Internet. She carefully changes the wording and prepares a good paraphrase. She doesn’t copy anything verbatim.
This is counted as plagiarism as Maria is paraphrasing the information she found on the internet in her own words, but is not giving credit to the original author/producer of that information.
- Directions: Decide whether the information described in each scenario will require citation of the source (Y or N) and explain why.
__N__1. You clearly identify the source at the beginning of a paragraph that summarizes the author’s ideas about teenage drinking. Since readers will naturally assume all of the ideas in the paragraph are from the source, no additional citation is necessary.
This does not require a citation of the source because the writer is just writing about the work as a whole to summarize the author’s idea of teenage drinking.
__Y__2. In your paper on the history of aviation you state the date of the Wright brothers’ first successful flight at Kitty Hawk.
Including the specific date and place of the Wright brothers’ first successful flight at Kitty Hawk would require a citation.
__Y__3. In a paper on the civil rights movement you find some general, well-known background information in an encyclopedia. It is obviously common knowledge, so you copy the information and include it in your paper.
This requires a citation of the source because copying information from another source word for word always requires a citation.
__N__4. You ask your mother about the steps she went through in obtaining a bank loan for a new car. You include this information in your paper.
This doesn’t require a citation, because when you ask someone questions you may not need to cite that because that could be general information unless you are taking a professional interview.
__N__5. You skim a 325-page book entitled using the Internet. A major theme throughout the book is that the Internet is an important technological achievement. You include this in your paper.
This doesn’t require a citation, because an idea or theme that is talked about in the entirety of the source doesn’t need to be cited.
__Y__6. You find an article that takes the same position you have taken on the subject of gun control. To save time you summarize in your paper a portion of the argument from the article, since the author’s ideas are identical to your own.
This requires a citation of the source because even though the original resource presents the same ideas as yours, those ideas are published by someone else (like having ownership over those ideas) before you. It is essential to cite those ideas and summarize them in your own words.
Group Activity -2 ( Isaiah Thompson, Jaden Mae Comia, Aaman Shah)
The picture shows how Trayvon Martin looks very young and how society weaponizes black males at a young age. This is due to white supremacy that is growing by the day in the United States recently. How white supremacy is growing, shows how white people will continue to target black men no matter what age they are. Trayvon was 17 when he died. He was buying skittles and an Arizona when a white male George Zimmerman decided that Trayvon posed a threat to the community he lived in. This also shows how as a black male you can’t do something as simple as buying candy without being viewed as a threat to society.
