Got English Cornered tonight. Holy moly, I really wish I could spend all of tomorrow in silence. But tomorrow's office hours is an indoor version of English Corner. Holy moly.
I am a not a monkey. I am not a monkey.
But I definitely am a fool.
I felt a kind of maternal pride after reading the first batch of midterm essays. Even in light of small grammatical errors, some of my students write beautifully and often surprise me with their prolific, poetic prose. But then I began to find essays containing the same beautiful lines.
Yeah, I was pissed. And yet, how could they cheat, much less plagiarize, on the essay section of an in-class exam?
I did some detective work and found out that nearly all of my students have been quoting or paraphrasing Mao's Little Red Book. Sure, some credit the man, but most don't bother, probably because his words come to them more naturally than their own - probably because their words are his words.
At the beginning of the semester, I swore to give them F's if I ever caught them plagiarizing.
But I've never been good at keeping promises, and this seems like a good one to break, though it certainly gives me no joy. After all, plagiarizing Mao is probably the safest thing a student could do here.
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1 comment:
Damn. Perhaps this could be a good opportunity? You could have a lesson on proper citations and exercises on interpreting passages and putting things in their own words. And emphasize that the point of the exercises is to find their own voice.
If they plagiarize again, fail the fuckers :)
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