A. 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.
Wikipedia is not a credible resource.
__N___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.
Citation is needed when quoting something.
__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.
Sugi and his professor had agreement.
__N___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.
Anything that is not writer’s words needs to be quoted and referenced.
__N___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.
Maria used others’ ideas even though it was in her words.
B. Directions: Decide whether the information described in each scenario will require citation of the source (Y or N) and explain why.
__Y___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.
Citation is always needed no matter what form of quoting.
__Y___2. In your paper on the history of aviation you state the date of the Wright brothers’ first successful flight at Kitty Hawk.
Writer needs to mention where did he get the message about the date of the Wright brothers’ first successful flight.
__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.
Putting information from the internet need to be cited.
__N___4. You ask your mother about the steps she went through in obtaining a bank load for a new car. You include this information in your paper.
Personal experience does not need citation.
__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.
Brief introduction of the book.
__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.
Citation is needed when using someone else’s ideas.