John Royce emailed:
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|"Several aspects of the story reported in this student newspaper |
|<http://www.centralfloridafuture.com/news/professors-plagiarism-reported-1.2799446>|
|are, I believe, worth thinking about. |
| |
|The professor's integrity was called into question when it was |
|discovered that several passages in his literature survey had been |
|taken word for word from the literature. Professor Li had used |
|parenthetical citation to indicate the source of his quotations, but |
|he hadn't used quotation marks, indents, or any other acceptable |
|method to indicate that the words were not his own. |
| |
|It's a common fault/ problem with those not raised in the western |
|academic tradition. And Professor Li is reported as stating, when it |
|was pointed out that high school students are taught documentation |
|techniques, that he was not raised in the American high school system, |
|he was schooled in China. |
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|Jude Carroll's dictum, "New game, new rules!" comes to mind, and her |
|advice that it matters not where you come from or what you are used to |
|in your home system, when you come "here" you play the game by THESE |
|rules. Fair enough - as long as you are told what the rules are. We |
|spend a lot of time telling students the rules (and hopefully giving |
|them practice and time to learn those rules - depending on the level |
|of education and previous experience), but what about the teaching |
|faculty? Do they get the same induction and training and opportunity |
|to practice? Or is it assumed that they come knowing the rules? |
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|A sub-set of those thoughts and questions, if those teaching don't |
|know the rules and requirements, their students may get mixed |
|messages, may get confused? |
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|And another question - how extensive is the "western" academic |
|tradition of quotation marks to denote quotations? or is this an |
|English-speaking-world academic requirement? What is the tradition in |
|Spain, France, Italy, Poland...? |
| |
|I well recall the light coming on for a Turkish student, when I gently |
|pointed out the problem with a piece of writing in his first draft: he |
|had indicated the source of all his copy-and-paste material (as had |
|Professor Li), but not a single quotation mark. "This is a quotation," |
|I pointed out, "and you signal quotations with quotation marks." |
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|"Oh!" he exclaimed, "so that is what those quotation-thingeys are all |
|about!" |
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|He had been told, he had been taught, but he had never learned. Until |
|then - and he never went wrong after that. The light had dawned. |
| |
|I recall a survey at the University of Leeds, a few years ago, an |
|exercise similar to Jude Carroll's "Where do you draw the line?" |
|scenarios - and a third of the students drew the line too low. |
|Worryingly, almost a third of the lecturers surveyed drew it too low |
|as well. |
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|My apologies for the length of this; just a few issues on my mind, all |
|coming together in this one newspaper report. |
| |
|John Royce |
|now retired (but still working!) |
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Dear all:
Quotation marks were dismissed as being pointless in the the book "The Complete Plain Words" which is a handbook on
using English for official paperwork.
With kind regards,
Paul Colin de Glouceſter
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