Education for all, what a statement, the cry for leaning and the need for it, is rising at an optimum degree. A call for literacy is ringing across the continents and the global community. As a result of this, research levels are increasing because of the desire to meet up with the demands of the various academic fields, an innumerable number of researchers plough the several research media and institutes seeking answers and/or likely problems.

Despite the sleepless works academics in making the world a better pace and making science the greatest asset of man, one major disheartening issue is the fact that, most of the discoveries, hypothesis and write-ups are plagiarised by some, who are unwilling to go the extra mile, or simply come out in truth and pure conscience to declare that the particular work is an effort of another man. This has proved to be the loudest threat posed on research works.

What is Academic Plagiarism?

 

Academic Plagiarism is an act of presenting another man's works either through speech or write-up or any electronic media, as if they were yours, without any reference to the source of information. A presentation that is not originally created by you but it is tendered as though it were yours.

What is my attitude towards academic plagiarism?

Academic plagiarism is both an act of cheating and of total impersonation; both are criminal offences. I believe that whoever is caught as a plagiarist should be met with strict disciplinary actions, by the academic body to which the plagiarist presents his or her works. The reason for this is because research works can be very strenuous. It requires a lot of attention, consumers a lot of time, takes away several amount of energy. Furthermore, it demands a great deal of concentration and most researchers are always on the move. This gulps a lot of money. The beauty of its success is to see the works echo through the ages as a monument to the researcher and the researcher alone. However, in the case where this work is “stolen” it is a big heartache. This is the reason why I am of the opinion that an appropriate measure of discipline should be given anyone who commits this crime.

Penalties for Academic Plagiarism in the US academy: - Plagiarism as you agree with me is a criminal offence, punishable by the stated applicable laws of the governing institution. Among the numerous possible penalties are these:-

Failure of Assignment: - This is the first and the paramount decision that is taken against a plagiarist. The reason is, since the creation of the work of research is not originally his/her and appropriate references or remarks are not made to the real owners of such works or papers, the assignment is rendered null. Any such work is not original and should not be tendered as such. Furthermore, insincerity in such dealing is strong enough to make void the assignment.

Failure of Course: - In the US academy when plagiarism is detected in a certain work, after the failure of the assignment, there is also of failure of the course, as a means of expressing the zero tolerance for plagiarism. This is a measure of strict discipline against a plagiarist.

Expulsion: - In the US academic institution, a person convicted of this crime may also suffer a terrible fate of total expulsion, depending on the level of plagiarism. This is because the crime is an act of academic thievery.

Denials of promotion and /or loss of position; - This is another way of treating plagiarism with the strictest measures of dealings. By the forfeiture of positions and promotions that is well deserved a plagiarist is taught a lesson and zero tolerance is also well spelt out to him/her, since one act of plagiarism has cost him so much.

How can Academic plagiarism be avoided? According to blogherald.com/2007/05/28 how-to-stop-plagiarism, I will state three important ways.

Cease and Decease: - This is mostly abbreviated as C and D; is a way of forwarding a formal note of warning to whoever is working as a plagiarist. The appropriate academic and/or research body sends the note of caution to the offender so that he/she may immediately cease and decease from the work, to reduce legal action. This medium is mostly used when the plagiarism is still minimal.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA):- In this way a write-up is sent to the various online search engines stating that the particular effort is a plagiarised work, followed by a demand to effect deletion of the materials so as to stop the encouragement of the work. When this is done, the work is declared a false achievement and as such it is treated with contempt.

Notification of Advertisement Network in Use: - Through the same (DMCA) notes and writings of notification are sent to the various advertisement networks, to stop promoting this work. When actions like this are taken, the work is not only announced through the most effective media as stolen, it is also prevented from further spread. Hence it reduces the possibility of an undue advantage given to a plagiarist for another's effort. The advertisement network in turn deletes the plagiarized work and then further appropriate actions can now be taken against the offender.

What tools exists to detect it and how do they work? The existing tools that I personally feel are.

Search Engines: - When a work is submitted, the concerned academic body should check for the authenticity of the authorship and the originality of the work done. This is achieved by checking the search engines for the existence of such works on any e-library or related electronic archives. By so doing no plagiarist will sneak past unnoticed and undetected. Therefore the use of search engines is very important to uncovering the activities of plagiarists.

Personal Effort: - A researcher should endeavour to post his/her works as journals or otherwise on the web. This will help reduce plagiarism, since search engines will always indicate its authorship and link the originality of the work back to the real researcher whenever it is checked for plagiarism. So, researchers themselves are advised to take to this safe means of avoiding the plagiarism of their works.

Conclusion: - Plagiarism is a crime against research; it should be condemned at all academic levels and should never be given a breathing space and so should plagiarist be treated. This is my personal cry against this crime plagiarism and I hope my little effort is worthy of fighting against it.

Roth stated that “the ideas of others, repeated uncritically, do not make a research paper”. Therefore, the author must think and write independently, but also credit the various sources that helped him or her put useful individual ideas into writing. This degree of responsibility and accountability must be developed by any student or author who wishes to create interesting and scholarly research papers.

A good research paper is just the tip of the iceberg. Before writing the actual paper, the author should spend a great deal of time gathering facts, ideas, examples, sources and other related information. If a topic is not provided, the author must also think about a mind provoking theme to talk about, and then narrow it to a specific field of interest. Many authors make the mistake of choosing a topic that is too broad. The result is that they get paralyzed with a flood of sources and ideas, or they simply can’t write anything at all. On the contrary, if the topic of your research paper has been narrowed down to an easily definable topic and a few key points, you are in a terrific position to use that as a starting point or springboard for your supporting ideas.

Forlini stated that “when you have gathered all your supporting material, you are ready to decide on the best method of organization”. Doing the research and gathering of ideas is just half the battle. For a research paper to be considered well written, its ideas must be arranged in a logical order and smooth transition. The real challenge to the writer comes at the actual writing stage. The ideas must be written in such a way that they achieve the writer’s purpose, whether it is to entertain, inform, or persuade the readers. To be able to achieve this, it would be helpful for the writer to develop an outline for the research paper. The purpose of the outline is to list the opening sentence, thesis statement, key points, and supporting sentences of the research paper in an orderly manner. This will ensure that the writer will not digress from the particular topic and will succeed in capturing the attention and winning the acclaim of the readers.

Why is Literature Important?

Literature instruction is a huge part of Language arts. There are different purposes for teaching literature. These are:

First is the academic or philological tradition. Second is to preserve traditions, customs or "upbringing". Third is teaching literature enables the students to read more and express their views openly. This is especially true in class discussions where students can express their interpretations of the texts based on their experiences. Fourth, literature also gives the students the chance to understand constructs or words, metaphors, images and plots. This exercise, of course, is instrumental in developing the student's imagination. Lastly, literature has the power to instruct and provides insight in one's experiences in life especially social order. This is often true in literary works where there are hidden messages implied their texts and the students learn to discover the meaning of what the author tries to portray.

Literature Circles

Literature circles or groups that allow book discussion are an important part of learning literature. Literature circles enable the students to own their learning and control it. The purpose of these groups is to allow students to experience reading the way adults do. First they read a book then they group together and discuss what they read.

Literature circles fit a high school curriculum best. It is important for the students to know what to ask during discussions, how to move forward when they have a standstill in a discussion and others.

Choosing the books to read is important in literature circles because this would allow the students to read different genres of books. A variety of books should be available to students when engage in this activity.

Each student should choose a role. These roles are only necessary to help the students get started. Once they get the hang of it, these roles can be abandoned later on. The workshop then becomes spontaneous.

Discussion & Spontaneity

Discussions can take place in a number of forms such as lectures, group readings and others. Engaging in discussion enables the students to have deeper awareness and attain learning and motivation so they can make their own views and express them.

Discussion takes a lot more than asking questions and letting the students answer. Discussion takes a great deal of emotional content as well intellectual engagement. The teacher acts as the host, moderator, judge and a number of other roles. There is uncertainty in how things go because discussion is the art of supervising spontaneity.

Discussion and spontaneity must go hand in hand then.

Spontaneity can be encouraged if students are allowed to speak their minds without fear f judgment or ridicule. Also, if opposing views are expressed, students must learn to respect others with different views on the matter. They must be made to understand that there is no one way of looking at an issue or solving a problem. There is value in diversity of opinions.

Mary M. Kitagawa's article “Its About Time to Talk” suggests that “Literature study conducted by students with restrained adult support is a powerful experience of introspection as well as social discourse”. The teacher primarily remains silent and allows the students' discussion to flow. The teacher merely supports the students' views of the discussions.

Miller (1991) in her work “Planning for Spontaneity: Supporting the Language of Thinking” talks about the teaching experience of Laura Jackson. Laura's goal was to make “her students to become avid readers who would make sense of all sorts of texts in their world”. Jackson allowed the students to write their responses to readings. This “set the stage for spontaneous collaboration”.

Tapping into their experiences enable the students to develop spontaneous, critical understanding. Miller states “Talking signaled that student response and making connections was central to active reading”.

Asking Questions

Teachers tend to ask questions in the "knowledge" category 80% to 90% of the time. Using higher order level of questions such as those that require much more "brain power" and a more extensive and elaborate answer are important tools to learning and could develop critical thinking among students.

Renner (1994) in his book “The Art of Teaching Adults: How to Become an Exceptional Instructor and Facilitator mentions a claim made by Scott Parry (1991) that “questions are [a teacher's] most valuable tools-for making points, for assessing understanding, for arousing interest, and for testing understanding”. In this book, Renner also discusses Donald Fairbairn's “seven deadly sins” which are questions that every teacher should refrain from asking because these do not challenge the students to think. These questions include simple "yes-no", multiple, ambiguous, chorus response, leading, ambush, and teacher-pleasing. The main goal of asking questions should be to develop critical thinking. Teachers should teach students to think for themselves not just accept whatever is told to them. Real learning occurs when students are engaged in the thinking process in order to arrive at valid conclusions.

Personally, I use asking questions as a method of encouraging participation in classroom. The drawback in this method though is the teacher always ends up answering her/his own questions. To address this problem, teachers should ask open-ended and questions that do not have definite right or wrong answers.

Rogers, Green, and Nussbaum (1988) write in their book “Asking Questions about Questions” about the relevance of asking questions inside the classroom. In the introduction, Rogers et al point out that lessons should go hand in hand with questions in order to encourage discussions between students and teachers. Discussion lesson is when “the teacher involves students in the construction of group knowledge in ways that that build a general disposition to listen to, consider, and be responsive to what others are saying”.

Right Answer

Asking questions is intended to extract the right answer. To some there can only be one right answer. But some questions can have a number of right answers. If there is not one right answer to the question, students need to be encouraged to express their views even if others have different opinions. They also need to respect others who have opposing opinions.

Teachers in making their lesson plans should consider activities that will make students come up with a variety of solutions to solve a problem. Instead of giving students step-by-step activities, teachers should allow students to explore with the task as much as she/he can and not search for a predetermined answer.

Teachers should not feed students with answers so they will be forced to come up with possibilities to the answer. Teachers should allow students enough time to think through their answers. Questions that require a "yes" or "no" answer should be avoided since this will discourage the use of critical thinking.

Answers could either be right or wrong. They are wrong if the information is false. If the information offered is not among the known then it could either be wrong answer or inappropriate answer. Sometimes "I don't know" is a right answer or "None of the above" and "There is no answer." An answer becomes the right answer, if the information provided is true and within the known alternatives. Questions that require right answers often begin with Who, what, which, where, when, does/do, is/are.

Open-Ended

Open-ended questions encourage discussion and sharing of ideas as opposed to close-ended questions. For instance:

'Do you love your parents?' is a close-ended question because it can be answered by either a yes or no.

But the question "How does your parents love you?” is an open-ended question because it encourages the student to express his/her opinion.

Open-ended questions often begin with "Why" and "How". It requests information from a person to clarify confusions. Here the manner in which the information is presented might be more important than the information provided. The questioner may have known the answer already and just needs to hear it expressed in another form.

Form of Classroom Management

Asking questions can be an effective way to manage the classroom. Asking a question is a good way to gain the students" attention. Gaining attention is important in influencing the students' behavior inside the classroom. Asking questions is also a good tool to engage the students in a task. It is believed that a good way to maintain student involvement is through task engagement.

Attention can be gained through using questions such as "will you please observe silence?" or "do you have your assignments?" Questions can also be used as a prompt as student performs activities. For instance, in teaching grammar, a teacher could ask "What is the present tense of "ran'?'

Bloom's Taxonomy

Below are the six question categories as defined by Bloom.

• Knowledge

  • remembering;
  • memorizing;
  • recognizing;
  • recalling identification and
  • recall of information
    • Who, what, when, where, how ...?
    • Describe

• Comprehension

  • interpreting;
  • translating from one medium to another;
  • describing in one's own words;
  • organization and selection of facts and ideas
    • Retell...

• Application

  • problem solving;
  • applying information to produce some result;
  • use of facts, rules and principles
    • How is...an example of...?
    • How is...related to...?
    • Why is...significant?

• Analysis

  • subdividing something to show how it is put together;
  • finding the underlying structure of a communication;
  • identifying motives;
  • separation of a whole into component parts
    • What are the parts or features of...?
    • Classify...according to...
    • Outline/diagram...
    • How does...compare/contrast with...?
    • What evidence can you list for...?

• Synthesis

  • creating a unique, original product that may be in verbal form or may be a physical object;
  • combination of ideas to form a new whole
    • What would you predict/infer from...?
    • What ideas can you add to...?
    • How would you create/design a new...?
    • What might happen if you combined...?
    • What solutions would you suggest for...?

• Evaluation

  • making value decisions about issues;
  • resolving controversies or differences of opinion;
  • development of opinions, judgements or decisions
    • Do you agree...?
    • What do you think about...?
    • What is the most important...?
    • Place the following in order of priority...
    • How would you decide about...?

What criteria would you use to assess?