Students are less likely to plagiarize when instructors discuss not only how to cite sources but why.

With all we hear about plagiarism, it’s easy to forget that much of it is unintentional. Students from other cultures or those with limited experience with academic research may truly be unaware that it’s wrong. You may also encounter students who know they must cite when using direct quotations, but don’t know the rule applies to paraphrasing.

Even students who know plagiarism is wrong often don’t understand the process of using and citing sources. Learning to quote and paraphrase correctly takes time, as does learning to write citations. As a writing instructor, you have to specify what is and isn’t acceptable use of another’s words or ideas. Have students practice paraphrasing. Show them how to integrate quotations into a text. And share scholarly articles, so students have a model for how a professional approaches citation in your discipline.

Far more troubling than innocent lapses, of course, are deliberate acts of plagiarism. While we can’t eradicate all such acts, the first step to deterring them is understanding why students plagiarize.

Students plagiarize because they’re up against a deadline.

You can encourage students to manage their time more effectively by imposing interim deadlines. Divide longer assignments into manageable sections. Either require students to submit multiple drafts or assign writing (such as proposals, research logs, audience analyses, mini-essays, or readings journals) that lay the groundwork for a longer project.

Breaking an assignment into less-demanding tasks—and giving students feedback on those tasks—means the work you see at the end of the process is less likely to be plagiarized. It’s also likely to be of higher quality, since students have had a chance to revise.

Students plagiarize because they don’t value the work.

Students are more likely to seek shortcuts when they think an assignment is just another box to check on the way to graduation. That’s why instructors should work to develop assignments that have real-world application and engage students in a deeper way than the traditional, end-of-term essay. While a few students may still resist, the majority will be glad that, if they have to write, they can at least see the relevance of it.

Also, always explain the purpose of an assignment and ask for feedback on it. And try to complete it yourself before assigning it; only then will you discover problems, such as a scarcity of scholarly sources, that could lead students to plagiarize.

Students plagiarize because they are overwhelmed.

Struggling students may plagiarize out of desperation, either because the material is too difficult or because they are weak writers. Such students may have an especially hard time paraphrasing: taking another person’s thoughts and recasting them in your own prose is especially challenging for an inexperienced writer dealing with the assured authorial voice of an academic source.

Collect early drafts to help you identify students who need additional support. In addition to offering your own help, you can also encourage them to visit the University Writing Center.

In some cases, it’s not writing, but conducting research that students find daunting. Ask your students how much experience they have with academic research, particularly in using the kind of sources they’ll need to complete your assignment, and be sure they know how to get help from the library staff. You can identify students who need assistance by requiring all student to give early reports (written or oral) about their research or having them make regular entries in a research log.

Students plagiarize because it’s easy.

College papers are easy to come by these days. But using another person’s paper or recycling their own from another class is much more difficult for students when writing assignments are specific and detailed, so be sure you’ve crafted your assignments with that in mind. If you want to give students a choice in what they write, give them options only within a controlled framework.

You should also specify the type and number of sources to be cited; asking for very recent sources can cut down on plagiarizing, as can requiring a unique combination of sources.

Be sure to alter your writing prompts every semester: at the very least, change the intended audience, redefine the scope of a project, adjust the requirements for interim drafts, or reconfigure the kind of sources required. Never leave papers outside your office for students to pick up, which can not only feed material to potential plagiarists, but also violates student policy.

Using a plagiarism-detection service such as Turnitin.com can also help curb plagiarism, but both you and your students need to know that it won’t find every abuse. It’s best used with drafts, and the reports need to be discussed in class so students understand their results. Finally, remember that most of the actions you take to deter plagiarism are also sound practices in the teaching of writing. These practices will help make your students more confident and capable writers, perhaps the best deterrent of all.

Assistant Clinical Professor Pat Wiese wants her students to understand the power of writing well.

Pat Wiese, assistant clinical professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture, knows that teachers can have a lasting impact on their students—and in terms of their writing advice, that’s not always a good thing.

Wiese, whose students are education majors preparing to teach reading and writing to children in elementary and middle schools, is surprised by the misinformation her students have accumulated.

“I’ve had students say, ‘Well, my high school English teacher said that you put a comma every time you breathe,” Wiese recalls with a smile. “So I ask them, ‘Does that mean if you’re an Olympic swimmer, you need fewer commas?’”

Wiese gives her students, who will soon be running their own classrooms, mini-lessons on grammar to correct such misconceptions. But the biggest weakness Wiese sees in her students’ approach to writing is their failure to recognize the importance of revision.

“Too many times they’re just pulling the paper out of the printer and turning it in. Instructors end up getting what students think is a final product, but it’s really a rough draft,” she explains. “I’ve had students tell me that, before coming to college, whenever they were required to turn in a first draft, they would write their paper and then just mess it up a little to create a ‘rough draft.’”

Wiese’s students, however, learn that revision is about more than appearances. Her W courses are structured to take students through each stage of the writing process: thinking, drafting, getting feedback, and revising. She routinely assigns low-stakes writing that allows students to practice in a low-stress way.

That’s key for Wiese, who believes students’ fears about writing really hinder their ability to write well: “They haven’t done enough writing before they get to the university level to calm their fears. What writing they have done has often been centered on the [state-mandated] TAKS test or some other test, so it’s very much a writing-for-the-test mentality and a very formulaic type of writing. These students think of writing as they think of taking tests.”

Wiese instead encourages her students to see writing as a way to clarify their thinking. In one course, she assigns journal dialogues, in which students reflect on readings from their text. They then share the dialogues with Wiese or other students before the whole group discusses the material in class. The result has been better writing and more thoughtful discussions.

Wiese also uses Calibrated Peer Review (CPR) in her classes and was surprised at first by how much her students like the process of peer response. It’s a critical step for them in learning to assess writing, a skill they’ll need in their own classrooms. The CPR exercises help them understand what kind of feedback actually helps a writer improve.

For the past two years, Wiese has served as the College of Education’s representative on the W Course Advisory Committee. When Wiese proposed her first W course, she didn’t think it would have to change much, since it was, after all, a course about teaching writing. But, she acknowledges, the course originally didn’t give students a structured way to revise. She had always invited students to bring their papers by during office hours, but the ones who needed the most help were often the least likely to seek it out.

Now that her students are required to submit multiple drafts and conduct peer reviews, their writing has improved.

Wiese’s advice for other instructors? “I’d say to anyone who’s proposing a W course that the rewards are substantial. It’s a lot easier to grade a good paper than a bad one.”

Wiese herself has come full circle. She began her career as a junior high English and social studies teacher, but left education to work in risk management, eventually becoming a company senior officer. She missed the classroom, though, and decided to pursue her doctorate.

Reflecting on her own career path has made Wiese even more convinced of the importance of writing. “The success I have had is due, more than anything else, to my ability to write,” she observes, adding, “Writing is powerful.”

And so, she might add, are writing teachers.

This summer the University Writing Center joined with several other campus entities to create the Teaching & Learning Cooperative (TLC). The group’s members include many of the university’s academic support organizations, now uniting to help faculty across campus deliver first-rate instruction.

If you’d like to know more about TLC, contact the group’s chair, Jean Layne of the Center for Teaching Excellence at j-layne@tamu.edu.

In October, UWC Executive Director Valerie Balester took a group of 15 undergraduate and graduate consultants and administrative staff to the National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing, held at Penn State University. The majority of those attending from the UWC also presented. Their topics were wide-ranging: One group of A&M panelists discussed their newly created ESL class, while another pair of UWC consultants spoke on the stereotypes and archetypes they have observed in tutoring sessions.

“These conferences are a great opportunity for our consultants—not only do they learn more about helping writers, they also get a chance to experience what it’s like to develop, propose, and create a public presentation,” says Balester.

Another group of consultants will attend the South Central Writing Centers Association Conference at the University of Oklahoma in March.

Dr. Balester also presented two addresses at conferences this year: she was a co-presenter of the keynote at the International Writing Centers Association Conference in Houston and delivered the keynote for the North Central Writing Centers Association in Frisco, Texas.