Writing in Your Own Voice: A Technique for Reducing Plagiarism and    

Common Writing Issues in Students' Scientific Writing

 

Abstract

 

In this post, we offer a simple Writing in Your Voice intervention to help students become more conscious of various types of plagiarism and writing difficulties. Based on an analysis of 365 student reports, we discovered that the intervention resulted in almost 50% fewer occurrences of plagiarism and general writing problems, as well as considerably fewer cases of serious plagiarism. This activity is simple to do and might be a valuable tool for teaching youngsters to write in their own voice.

Keywords: Plagiarism, Writing, Academic writing skills

Introduction

Student plagiarism is a source of worry in a variety of academic areas. Rather than premeditated plagiarism of others' ideas and work, students frequently misinterpret the requirements for using and citing sources. According to Davis and Ludvigson, 76 percent of their student participants cheated in high school or college. Students may get insufficient or inconsistent writing and plagiarism training, according to Froese et al.

Plagiarism in student scientific writing can take many forms and be of varying severity. Copying occurs when an author steals an identical sequence of words, phrases, or whole sentences from another source. Patchwriting is the technique of copying content using quotation marks and/or references (which is easier) rather than copying without inverted commas or referencing (which is more difficult). Many students mistakenly feel that Patchwriting is a legitimate method of paraphrasing, therefore teaching is likely to be very beneficial. Patchwriting refers to statements that have been duplicated from originals with little attempt at rephrasing into one's own language or understanding. Technical parroting, which refers to reproduced text from a lab handbook or lecture slides, is widespread in student laboratory reports.

To avoid plagiarism, several institutional steps have already been done. To effectively prevent plagiarism and raise students' awareness of how to write with their own voices, it is not enough to simply provide students with information and use similarity detection software; we must also develop students' academic writing skills and make them build their own awareness of plagiarism. A number of successful therapies have been developed to help pupils improve their paraphrase and citation abilities.

We propose a three-step "Write in Your Own Voice" intervention in this article to increase students' comprehension of plagiarism and writing issues by giving a step-by-step approach to spotting and avoiding different forms of plagiarism.

Importantly, the intervention for each type of plagiarism would include a writing process for which students are asked to create their own version of the plagiarism source, correct it, and align plagiarism errors with our academic integrity values, demonstrating their ability to identify plagiarism as well as write in their own voices.

 

Methods

The Writing in Your Own Voice intervention is a three-part writing activity that raises awareness of plagiarism. Part I concentrates on the major content and highlights the need of citations and author information. Part II requires students to assess the difficulty of writing and general plagiarism by supplying samples, revised versions, and explanations for each. Part III challenges students to summarize knowledge from key literary sources in three distinct ways while following correct citation guidelines. Each quarter, students in the treatment and control groups were required to finish a 10-week biology course by week two. GPA levels did not change between treatment and control groups (p > 0.05, ANOVA). The final tests for all four portions were almost identical, and there was little change in the distribution of final exam marks among parts

 

Discussion

According to anthropological study, the interactive Writing in Your Own Voice activity decreases all sorts of plagiarism and writing issues in student reports dramatically. Exposure to a sample of plagiarized materials is likely to strengthen the link between plagiarism issues and students' real-world experiences.

In the therapy group, we noticed a decrease in all categories of plagiarism, , with the Patchwriting sample showing the least reduction (36 percent decrease compared to a 59 percent decrease in Copying by Reference, Figure 1B). Students might consider concepts and information gathered from manuals or lectures to be scientific fields of general knowledge that do not need citations.

The intervention Writing in Your Own Voice may have no effect on students' general attitude about writing these portions of the report. Students frequently rely on lab manuals for background information and process details, which leads to a high proportion of mistakes in this area. Problems in the Discussion sections were frequently attributed to external sources, suggesting that students are attempting to acquire material to back up their argument, but they may lack some of the skills required to synthesize and use this information.

One of the reasons students may struggle with writing is a lack of enthusiasm to treat labreports as a genuine scientific writing experience. Creating an authorial identity in which students see themselves as authors who make a unique contribution to the area has an impact on how they write and use external materials.

This was an unexpected discovery that adds support to the hypothesis that authorial identity and plagiarism are linked. Further investigation into the approaches students adopt while writing their lab reports might provide a clearer explanation for why we notice chronic writing issues in particular parts.

Conclusion

Interventions that raise plagiarism awareness and provide students hands-on experience with different types of plagiarism have a significant beneficial impact on student writing. Future assignment repetition may include more assistance in the form of practice and feedback to improve students' ability to accurately employ key literary sources and paraphrase.

References:

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Burdine, L. K., Mayra, BA., Vashi, N. A. (2019). Text recycling: self-plagiarism in scientific writing. Elsevier. International Journal of Women’s Dermatology 5: 134-136.

Division of Biological Sciences, Writing in Your Own Voice: An Intervention that Reduces Plagiarism and Common Writing Problems in Students’ Scientific Writing, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California

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