Unoriginal Sins IELTS reading answer

Are we creating a generation of people unable to distinguish between an original idea and a
borrowed one?
Cyber-cheating' and 'cyber-shoplifting' are new words coined to describe the worldwide
rise in. plagiarism and abuse of copyright. Universities, in particular, are reeling from this new
"version of plain old academic dishonesty, with students copying entire slabs or essays with a
click-and-drag motion, buying essays from cheat sites; or even paying people to write them.
Jan Thomas, a pro-vice-chancellor at Perth's Murdoch University, knows how easy it is to lift
information from the internet. On her desk is a 2000-word essay liberally highlighted with yellow
markings. On a sheet beneath is the article the student cribbed from. His entire philosophy
essay on friendship has been copied verbatim, with the exception of about 50 words. 'This
the student probably put "friendship" in the search.engine and found a 1996 article about Aristotle's
writing on achieving a good life,' says Thomas. 'But this is an extreme example.
Al Murdoch University first-year students are given mandatory instruction on.
referencing and continuing per sources. it's three stakes and you're out,' says Thomas
But you can be excluded from the university on the first occasion if the breach is severe
she has suspicions, Thomas uses a search engine such as Google or Yahoo! to enter
phrases and find out if slabs of text have been lifted. But it's time-consuming. 'In a div son
500 students last year I saw five definite cases. It probably means we are missing about 50
One of Thomas's colleagues in another department says she deals with 20 cases of plagiarism 1
a semester, She says some students change every third word to avoid detection on search
engines One student even plagiarised her bibliography - detected when eight of ine sources
she cited were not stocked in the university library.
Plagiarism and cheating are, of course, not new - what is new is the fact offenders are ber
caught, says Thomas. 'I think we're more rigorous now."
Currant reliable figures on the incidence of plagiarism are surprisingly scarce, perhaps
because universities are loath to reveal them, This is one of the reasons CAVAL, a
university-owned information resources group, conducted its own investigation last year on
behalf of eix Victorian.universities. It checked nearly 2000 essays over 20 subjects using a
a new plagiarism-detection program called Tumitin.com, which can scan 2.6 billion journals
for matching ten, Plagiarised parts of an essay are highlighted in red and the original source
Lônoue
Research leader Steve O'Connor says one in eight students was found to have
copied 25 per cent or more
an essay from the internet, But he believes this is just the
tip of the iceberg and estimates as many as 500,000 essays a year could contain some
plagiarism. Adding to the problem are a host of ne websites such as 'School Sucks',
'Other People's Papers' and The Evil rouse of Cheat', which offer downloadable university
/a pue s.aded
D. Garry Allan, director of information technology at RMIT, says plagiarism 'needs to be
addressed within the framework of academic integrity. he p.roblem is) social values and
nature of learning are fagging behind technology.' Allan floats an intriguing idea: one day every
computers in the world may find themselves pressing an 'originality check' button on the
keycard Athe moment you have a spellchecker in your /ord processor. In the future you
have an originality checking button and when you press it, it will underline in a particular colour
ted string that is not identifiably original' coys Allan,