How to Check Plagiarism in Student Papers

Plagiarism is unfortunately a prevalent problem in many schools. When students plagiarize, they learn nothing from the completion of a lesson. To effectively retain material, students must take the information into their brain, process it and generate an original response, not simply copy the words of another verbatim. Many teachers lament that they can not do anything about plagiarism, even when they are nearly certain that the words on an assignment are not the student’s own. There are, however, some easy ways to detect plagiarism. By detecting and punishing plagiarism, teachers can not only ensure that plagiarizers do not get credit for the copied work, but also curb future plagiarism as students see that the practice will not be tolerated.

Instructions

1. Find areas that were likely plagiarized. Read through the paper and look for areas that do not seem to be in the student’s natural voice. Also look for the excessive use of any high level vocabulary, as this commonly indicates that a section is plagiarized.

2. Type the section into a word processing document. Type the suspicious section into a word processing document to create a digital copy of the text, allowing you to complete your search. If the student turned the paper in digitally, you can skip this step as you already have a non-print copy.

3. Copy and paste the text into a search engine, surrounding it by quotes. Select one or two sentences at a time, and place them into your favorite search engine. Do not select too large a portion of text, as this will reduce the effectiveness of the search. To copy and paste quickly, highlight the text that you would like to copy, and hit the control key and the C key simultaneously. Place your cursor in the search box on the search engine, and press control and V to paste the information.

4. Read through the top results to identify exact matches. Many search engines indicate if all or part of the quoted text was found. Look through the top results to see if your section of text was copied word for word from the Internet.

5. Subscribe to a plagiarism detection service. If plagiarism continues to be a prevalent problem in your classroom, you may want to consider subscribing to a plagiarism detection service. These services cost money, but they do provide a more sensitive and exhaustive plagiarism search that will catch more plagiarism than the standard Internet plagiarism search. Check with your administration to see if your school holds a subscription to one of these services.

References

• Plagiarism.org: Plagiarism Prevention
• Education World: Put an End to Plagiarism in your Class

Resources

• Turn It In
• Glatt Plagiarism Services
• Copyscape