Why students plagiarize
Introduction to plagiarism
We already defined plagiarism in our article many definitions of plagiarism as the act of using another person’s work, ideas, or concept as your own. Plagiarism is the biggest enemy of success to students. Some students plagiarize intentionally while other students plagiarize unintentionally.
Why students Plagiarize
Even those students who plagiarize accidentally or unintentionally still face the consequences of plagiarism. As a student, you should always ensure that your work is within the limits of acceptable plagiarism levels. It does not necessarily have to be zero percent.
In this article we provide the reasons why students plagiarize, alongside how to detect and avoid plagiarism.
Types of plagiarism committed by students.
Plagiarism can broadly be categorized as accidental or unintentional plagiarism and intentional plagiarism.
Intentional plagiarism covers things like copy pasting, submitting previously submitted papers and using paraphrasing software.
Unintentional plagiarism covers things like relying on one source for research, failing to cite all borrowed ideas, using many quotes, failing to cite diagrams, charts and illustrations.
We already mentioned that whether your work is accidentally plagiarized or not, the consequences remain the same because you are expected to have all the relevant information related to plagiarism.
Why students plagiarize
- Fear of failing
- Desire for better grades
- Lack of interest in the given assignment
- Lack of enough time to finish the given assignment
- Use of paraphrasing tools and AI writing tools such as ChatGPT
- Ignorance about the sources of plagiarism
- Failure to put proper citations to the paper
- Failure to paraphrase and write in own words
- Relying on one source of reference for your research
- Confidence that they will not be caught
How to detect plagiarism for students
Detecting all the plagiarism requires a powerful plagiarism checking software. The most powerful plagiarism checking software is Turnitin. We already explained the 10 reasons why Turnitin is the best plagiarism checker.
Turnitin can detect about 90% of plagiarism in a paper. Other plagiarism checkers cannot detect even 50% of plagiarism in a paper.
To detect plagiarism, follow these steps
- Go to Turnitin.com
- Enter your email and password (contact us if you need these two)
- Click on the active class
- Upload your paper
- Refresh then wait for the plagiarism report
- Download and analyze the plagiarism report
If you do not have the Turnitin email and password, you can contact us we set it up for you. We will give you access to one-year Turnitin subscription for only $29.99 USD. We only give access to non-repository account, to mean your work will not be stored in the Turnitin database (no risk of self-plagiarism). You can check how we create non repository Turnitin accounts for our clients.
How to avoid plagiarism if you are a student
The following are the strategies that you can use to avoid plagiarism
- Do not copy paste
- Do not submit a previously submitted document
- Do not rely on one source for reference
- Cite and reference all borrowed ideas and concepts
- Write everything in your own words
- Add your own thoughts and analysis to the borrowed ideas
- Always check your draft paper with Turnitin before submission (contact us for Turnitin logins)
- Do not wait till last minute to start your assignments, start early enough to give you ample time to do your research and writing
- Do not use AI paraphrasing software like Quillbot or ChatGPT
Conclusion on why student plagiarize
We can conclude that plagiarism is a serious academic offense for students whether you commit it intentionally or unintentionally. A students need to acquaint himself or herself with the many types of plagiarism so that he can finds ways of avoiding them. There are many reasons why students plagiarize and key among them are the desire for good grades and failing to start their assignments early. Among the many plagiarism checkers out there, they best plagiarism checking software for students still remains to be Turnitin. If you are a student and you are struggling with plagiarism, please contact us for plagiarism removal services at a small fee.