Plagiarism

Posted: September 3rd, 2013

Plagiarism

Name:

Course:

Instructor:

Institution:

Date:

Plagiarism

Plagiarism can be identified as the process of stealing or copying another person’s written work and presenting as original. In the process of writing people paraphrase sentences wrongly and end up plagiarizing their work. Good paraphrasing entails

Plagiarized pages

The writer in the opening sentence uses the correct citation process by putting the words of Nickerson in quotes followed by the page number, which is an indicator of knowledge of the citation format (Nickerson, 1999). However, in the second sentence the writer loses track by directly paraphrasing the works in same words as by Nickerson. This is clearly indicated by the words “treat people as if they have knowledge that they do not have, we can cause miscommunication and perhaps embarrassment”. This is identical to Nickerson (1999) original works which has the same words in the sentence “Treating people as though they have knowledge they do not have can result in miscommunication and perhaps embarrassment” (Nickerson, 1999).

The plagiarized work continues to the next sentence with the excerpt of the sentence “convey to others information that” followed by the words “can assume they already have” except for the plural of one the writer uses we to imply the presence of readers in general (Nickerson, 1999). The sentence was identical to the words of Nickerson (1999) which were “generally does not convey to others information that one can assume they already have”. The words in this sentence are clearly identical to each other. The preceding sentence is also plagiarized by the presence of the words “A speaker overestimating what his or her listeners already know may be talking over their heads” this is clearly identical to Nickerson’s (1999) work illustrated “A speaker who overestimates what his or her listeners know may talk over their heads;”. It is followed by the next plagiarized part of the same sentence “underestimates their knowledge” (Nickerson, 1999). The next and last part of the same plagiarized sentence is illustrated by the words “be perceived as talking down to them”. The last part of the article is also plagiarized by the words “work against effective and efficient communication”. This is a clear indication that the writer lacks the paraphrasing skill, which is hard to master and takes a lot practice to become proficient in paraphrasing work written by other writers and avoiding plagiarism.

Revised work

Raymond Nickerson notes that effectiveness in communication among people can be attributed to knowledge of or lack of knowledge of what pertains to the communication (Nickerson, 1999). Express implication that people have relevant knowledge of which they lack results in lack of proper communication between people or more so it can result in embarrassing moments for people conversing (Nickerson, 1999). Thus when communicating with people it is not wise to assume that they know what we are communicating which can result in awkward moments fro people. Communication among people can be viewed from different perspectives (Nickerson, 1999).

When an individual is talking to people as if they already have knowledge about what he or she is speaking about, this might be viewed by the listeners as talking senseless (Nickerson, 1999). Whereas and individual talking to people and explaining every aspect of the conversation might be viewed as arrogant because the listeners might view him as an individual who views his listeners as people who cannot comprehend issues. Such aspects in communication might sever or deteriorate the communication itself between people because of the different understandings of the subjects being communicated (Nickerson, 1999).

References

Nickerson, R. S. (January 01, 1999). How we know–and sometimes misjudge–what others know: Imputing one’s own knowledge to others. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 6, 737-759.