Unoriginal essays are a common problem, and higher educational institutions are very strict in terms of punishing these behaviors. Even college dismissal is used as a penalty for the students who plagiarize in their papers. Recent research showed that elementary and middle school students could understand its concept and avoid improper behaviors in the future. Therefore, we developed several tips to avoid plagiarism. The initial goals are making students, parents, and teachers familiar with these tips. This will help increase awareness of this problem and avoid these practices in colleges.
Why Do They Do This?
Infringement of copyright is one of the biggest problem college administrations ever addressed. Even with the advent of advanced technologies, students still plagiarize. They do it for various reasons: to seem smarter than they are, to save time on writing, to increase the number of words missing, laziness, etc. They may plagiarize intentionally or unintentionally. Sometimes they may not realize that using phrases borrowed from other sources is unacceptable. Parents should participate in the fight for eliminating plagiarized essays. Parents and teachers should make efforts and teach students to use proper writing approaches. Only in this case, we can reduce the percentage of plagiarized papers. Using https://paperap.com/ is one of the ways to control it. Parents can use a plagiarism checker for students to help their children avoid this illegal activity. In fact, any essay plagiarism checker can be used to complete unique papers. Parents should teach young students to avoid borrowed phrases, but before doing this, they should familiarize themselves with the types of content stealing patterns.
Types of Plagiarism
As a rule, students make use of the following types of plagiarizing:
- Copying and pasting the parts of texts written by other authors – this is the most common type of plagiarism. Students copy the parts of texts and place these parts in their papers either purposefully or unintentionally.
- Copying texts and making small changes – students copy the sections of texts and replace several words by synonyms.
- Copying parts of several sources – using several sources and a couple of own phrases to assemble a unique text.
- Using incorrect citation – students forget to cite the source from which they derived the core ideas or cite these sources improperly.
- Submitting their own prior papers for the second time – sometimes students fail to write a paper on time and submit their previous papers. In this case, the online checker will identify sections borrowed from other sources.
Now when you know its types, you can help your children develop steps to avoid plagiarism and learn appropriate patterns of writing. As parents, you should explain to children the consequences of borrowing phrases from other sources like reduced grades or dismissal from colleges once infringement of copyright is detected. Students can significantly improve their writing style by skipping borrowed phrases. If children plagiarize intentionally, show them how teachers can detect their patterns with the help of online checkers. Kids should realize that borrowed sections and phrases can’t stay undetected, and teachers are equipped with the tools helping reveal cheating. Therefore, infringement of copyright can’t remain undetected.
How to Stop It
It’s not possible to answer the question “what is the best way to avoid plagiarism?” because the patterns you should use depend on its type. For example, if you noticed that your child uses the wrong citation style, you can check the rules of citation and improve essay format. If your child uses a copy-paste approach, you can help him/her derive the main idea and develop his/her own thoughts and paraphrase. You can use free checkers available on the internet to remove plagiarized phrases from papers.
Here we develop several suggestions of how to stop plagiarism:
- Take notes of main ideas – taking notes should become a habit of your child if you want to avoid completing plagiarized essays. She can write an essay based on her notes without unnecessary copying. Children may either use electronic notebooks, smartphones, or make paper notes.
- Properly cite sources – teach your children to cite sources by getting them familiar with main citation styles like MLA, APA, and Harvard. Colleges set different requirements for citing, and children should be aware of these rules.
- Encourage children to write individually – let them put away the books and articles to develop their thoughts based on the notes they make. This should be a habit. Students should learn how to form their own opinion based on the notes written after reading the sources.
Obviously, plagiarism for kids can be an unclear concept, and parents should explain to their children how to use sources properly. Parents should participate in the education process because failure to meet college requirements may lead to unfavorable consequences for students.