This document discusses techniques for avoiding plagiarism, specifically paraphrasing and summarizing. It notes that while the internet provides vast resources for students, it also enables easy plagiarism through copy and paste. The document outlines 6 steps for effective paraphrasing according to Purdue OWL, including reading sources fully, writing paraphrases in a new document, including context notes, and citing sources. It also contrasts summarizing with paraphrasing, noting that summarizing should be shorter and include the main ideas of the original source. Overall, the document encourages teaching students paraphrasing and summarizing skills to help them avoid plagiarism when using internet sources in their writing.

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EDUARDO HERNÁNDEZ RANGEL
Tammy Chapman
ADVANCE WRITING
DECEMBER 06, 2015
Avoiding Plagiarism for Dummies
Consciously or unconsciously plagiarism is a violation of copyright that should be avoided
inside the classroom; spending enough time to train the students in techniques to help them
to write effective essays. The simplest way to avoid plagiarism and forget the copy and
paste techniques is learning the basis of paraphrasing and summarizing to avoid it.
Plagiarism is way to deliver essays or assignments without or with minimal endeavored.
According to Merrian Webster online dictionary Plagiarism is an offensive act to use
words, text, phrases or ideas from other sources and use it as one’s own without giving the
credits. Many teachers at the beginning of the classes use to talk about plagiarism but when
the classes are in progress they forget the issue and never talk about it anymore. Maybe,
because the cultural behavior of each country tends to minimize such act. It is very
common for student to search a topic on Internet change some words and deliver the
assignments to the teacher to receive a positive grade. Most of the time the teacher does
not have time to search the assignment on internet and just the search is limited to the
assignments to the same group that is the reason why copy, paste and change some words
get good, not deserve, grades.

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Since Internet grew up, too many resources where available and the copy and paste action
took a real meaning for the student. Internet was popular around 1995 and thousands of
papers, issues, books and even homework essays were available for students so that search,
copy and paste where easy to use. Due to, “The Internet has reduced the effort required to
plagiarize and has made available resources that adept students can use in their
coursework” (KRISHNAMURTHY), students do not stop to read and understand what they
want to learn, simply they commit plagiarism consciously or unconsciously. Even more
students do not stop to analyze whether the sources are reliable or not. To use sources
effectively without plagiarizing, teacher should spend time to train student to use several
sources and write the author credits (MOORE R., DAVIES H AND L). Using several sources
on Internet it is a good way for doing a synthesis essays but teachers must teach student to
do it without plagiarizing, using paraphrasing and summarizing correctly.
Applying paraphrasing is an easy way to avoid plagiarism and deliver quality assignments.
“To paraphrase is to include the ideas or information from an original source in your paper
by rephrasing those ideas or information in your own words” (Plagiarism.org). Definitively,
paraphrasing and citation sources take it from Internet is a valid way to express thoughts
from other sources without plagiarizing. Purdue OWL suggests 6 steps to paraphrase
effectively.
1. Read the sources until you comprehend the main idea.
2. Keep the original sources and paraphrase in a new document.
3. Write at the top of each paraphrase subject and at the bottom write some words to
aid you about the context of the paraphrase.
4. Verify that the paraphrase has all the essential information.

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5. In case you use exactly words or phrases from the source, use quotation marks.
6. Assign credits to the authors at the end of the work.
In my point of view these 6 steps are very easy to write effective paraphrases without
committing any copyright violation.
Summarizing is another valid way to avoid plagiarism and it is easier than paraphrasing. In
contrast than paraphrasing, summarizing always is shorter than the original sources. Both,
summarizing and paraphrasing must have citation. Both are compounded by ideas borrow
from other sources but summarizing involves paraphrasing what you read. In other words,
summarizing include paraphrasing. “A summary is a brief explanation of a longer
text. Some summaries, such as the ones that accompany annotated bibliographies, are very
short, just a sentence or two. Others are much longer, though summaries are always much
shorter than the text being summarized in the first place” (Krause). Avoiding plagiarism
through this technique it is a valid way, just remember that summarizing intent to reduce
text from the main author’s idea.
Plagiarism is viewed seriously in college but too many student do not know how to do
paraphrasing or summarizing so that it is easy for them to copy something from Internet
and deliver as if they were the author; learning to use paraphrasing and summarizing
techniques from high school should prepare the student to write best essays and they should
avoid plagiarize in future assignments taking advantage from vast sources on Internet.

4. HERNÁNDEZ, 4
Works Cited
MERRIAM WEBSTER. RETRIEVED FROM HTTP://WWW.MERRIAM-
WEBSTER.COM/DICTIONARY/PLAGIARISM
PLAGIARISM.ORG. HOW TO PARAPHRASE. RETRIEVED FROM
http://www.plagiarism.org/citing-sources/how-to-paraphrase/
MOORE R., DAVIES H ANDL (2009, MARCH). PLAGIARISM IN THE INTERNET AGE.
RETRIEVED FROM HTTP://WWW.ASCD.ORG/PUBLICATIONS/EDUCATIONAL-
LEADERSHIP/MAR09/VOL66/NUM06/PLAGIARISM-IN-THE-INTERNET-AGE.ASPX
STEVEN D. KRAUSE. (2007, SPRING). THE PROCESS OF RESEARCH WRITING. RETRIEVED
FROM HTTP://WWW.STEVENDKRAUSE.COM/TPRW/CHAPTER3.HTML/
KRISHNAMURTHY S. THE IMPACT OF THE INTERNET ON PLAGIARISM RETRIEVED FROM
HTTP://FACULTY.WASHINGTON.EDU/SANDEEP/D/INTERPLAG.PDF
PURDUE OWL. (2014, OCTOBER 10). PARAPHRASE: WRITE IT IN YOUR OWNWORDS.
RETRIEVED FROM HTTPS://OWL.ENGLISH.PURDUE.EDU/OWL/RESOURCE/619/1/