Addressing Plagiarism @ the U

Most students plagiarise because of several reasons.

• They want to sound and be like seasoned academic writers/authors.
• They have limited or no knowledge about writing academic articles according to the style and conventions of academic writing genre.
• They want to complete written academic assignments in the fastest manner possible (shortest time but with little effort).
• They are not accustomed to the concept of writing in drafts before achieving the final version.

Stealing ideas from others

To avoid committing plagiarism, students should be made aware of strategies that they can acquire. They can learn to unlearn the misconceptions and incorrect practices about academic writing skills that they acquired in the past. In acquiring academic writing skills, several main strategies are listed below:

Distinguishing the forest and the trees

Constructing the unifying blocks

Analysing the moves