This problem involves ethics, morals and culture. In addition, students are
under a lot of pressure to produce, produce, produce. When they have a
holiday they have to make up the days they take off by going to school on
the weekend. Then, during their holiday time, they have a big load of
homework that their teacher has given them. (Since teachers are judged on
the performance of the students it is in the teachers' interest to load the
students with as much schoolwork as they can.) It's not like the only thing
they have to do is our little writing assignment. And sometimes these
assignments may seem a little dubious to our students. Some teachers'
assignment topics have little in connection with the students' future work.
The problem is all quite complicated but we can easily simplify things if we
get back to our goal. If we are teaching writing then perhaps our goal is to
teach how to produce a writing assignment based on various materials.
Simply give them the materials that you want them to use. You can give them
books to work from, websites or web pages or printouts. In this way, you
know the original material and can easily tell if they are copying
something. It may be difficult to have enough books to use as the source but
there is plenty on the Internet. In this way, the students can have the
experience of writing something based on materials from many sources, how to
take notes from the material, develop an outline and organize their
information, develop a draft and a final version -- a very useful skill in
school and at work.
Of course, it would be good if we could let the students explore the entire
Internet and discover all kinds of source materials but from the discussion
taking place here on all the issues involved you can see how complicated it
is to ensure academic integrity.
Dave Kees
GUANGZHOU, CHINA
Email -
DAVEKEES@...
Chat - Skype:DAVEKEES QQ:897869963
Blog -
http://DAVEKEES.blogspot.comPodcast -
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http://INSIGHTS-INTO-TEFL.blogspot.comPodcast -
http://gcast.com/u/INSIGHTS_TEFL
