Task 6 Plagiarism

Undergraduate students have a lot of pressure put upon them, regarding the  methods used for writing essays, and the standard they have to be written to. If the pressure becomes too much students may resort  to plagiarism, which  could potentially ruin the students chances of continuing the course.   There are many methods that will help a student ward off the temptation of plagiarism , for example Young argues that ‘the most valuable resource for avoiding plagiarism is time’. The 'time' that Young refers to can be utilised  to  focus on many features of an essay, such as the critical argument that can define an essay. Yet there is a lot of critical material that a student can use to construct the overall argument. Young proposes that ‘finding an acceptable critical voice is difficult’. A student is expected to combine their own voice with that of a critic, however sometimes a critics voice can overpower the students. This can be considered as 'plagiarism', as the student has not contributed enough of their own opinions and used most of the ideas from the critics work. Modern culture values these critics voices, yet when used in a students essay is scrutinised. The reason why we value there ideas, is they use there voice to criticise a text as Young puts forward ‘[you do have a voice not just to admire a text, but to [...] ask it questions’. The answers these critics provide can be used by students to answer the question, while the student hasn't asked their own questions about the text. It is considered to be 'theft and fraud'to use these answers given, on the other hand there are people using ideas from other people all the time in different professions, this adds to the pressure as plagiarism committed by students is placed higher on the scale rather than other people. Overall, it takes 'time' to be able to use a critics ideas and enhance with one of your own when questioning a text, and producing an answer. It takes a degree of control and skill to write an essay while incorporating ideas from other literary critics.