Mismatched Musings: Don't Plagiarize

It has happened at least once every semester, and it's always funny to me how blatantly obvious plagiarism can be. Do the students think they can really get away with it?

I've been told it's a cultural thing; the explanation is that many students in Asia are taught that it's a way to "honor" the original scholar by copying their work verbatim and passing it off as their own thoughts.

Well, welcome to another bit of culture shock. This "honor" in one part of the world amounts to academic dishonor in these parts. I've dealt with this issue in various ways in the past: direct confrontation, or printing out the matching portion that I've Googled to show them and say, "Heh heh, I caught you!"

This time, though, I was a bit more stealthy. In retrospect, I could have handled it better in order to really nail the student, but instead I chose the embarrassment route. Here's a truncated version of my interaction with the offender.

Teacher: "Wow, student X! This is a really great speech. You don't have any mistakes. You worked very hard."

X: "Thank you. Yes, it took a long time."

T (pointing out some idioms): "Hmmm, let's see. Where did you learn these words? It's very natural, native-like speech. That's good."

X: "I found them in the dictionary."

T: "Really? That's funny, they usually don't have full idioms in the dictionary, that's what these are."

X: "..."

T: "Okay, what about this word (shortcomings)?"

X: "Oh, that means when someone does something really good."

T: "Uh, sorry. It's actually the opposite. It means something the person can't or doesn't do well."

X: "Really? Oh."

T: "Your challenge is to rewrite this speech using your own words. I'd like to see you work a little harder."

X (seemingly understanding my implied message): "I guess you're right. Okay."

It will be interesting to see what X comes up with. If X were a more serious student, I would have really driven home the point that this kind of behavior can result in failing grades, or even expulsion. But, since I've lost all hope for X for a variety of reasons, I just tried to deflate X's ego.