Group 8 : Topic "Plagiarism"

As a group we chose Plagiarism as a topic to present on. We found it very interesting to write about as it happens everywhere around the world ,but the punishment for it is not as severe as other forms of crime.

We would like to start by giving our readers three different definition of plagiarism that we found during the research that we conducted on this topic :

1. “Copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not” http://www.plagiarism.org/plag_article_what_is_plagiarism.html 9/11/12
2.Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions,"(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism) 9/11/12

There's a recent case of plagiarism that happened with a famous journalist Fareed Zakaria of CNN where he used another author's work without using as reference .This act led to his suspension from the network and will probably hurt his credibility from now on . To best reflect my thoughts , this article " A scandal Threatens Zakaria's Image as a Media Star" from the New York Times written by CHRISTINE HAUGNEY, August,19,2012 is a good illustration of it . 9/11/12

In China, some people don't care about plagiarism .The reason is that the laws in China doesn't enforce it as much as it is in the United States . The world view is that China's plagiarism problem poses a risk to innovation and further economic growth . An example of plagiarism in China include an associate professor at Tongi University who resigned from his position after plagiarizing a test given to his students from a test given at another college.http://www.forbes.com/2010/05/26/china-cheating-innovation-markets-economy-plagiarism.html 9/11/12

To conclude we would like to talk about how to avoid plagiarism . Some ideas that we would like to share are:

1.  Become informed:do not say "I don't know" you can found many information from the website and remember to cite and cross reference your sources.
2. Use quotation marks when using someone's else work and always cite it as reference .

And also  we would like to bring awarness about this topic by hoping that people who will end up reading our blog and pass on the knowledge to others.

Mohamed, Yifu Chen,Yang Qu