Self-plagiarizing assignment

Us vomit the same essay to several classes. It is the issue that people are discussing. Some people think that it is cheating when you submit the same essay to another class. Some people think that is acceptable. It is the difference between self-plagiarism and plagiarism. Self-plagiarism is ‘ the reuse of significant, identical, or nearly identical portions of one’s own work without acknowledging that one is doing so or without citing the original work”. ( http://en. Wisped. Org/wick/Main_Page) Some people consider self- plagiarism as cheating.

However, many evident shows that self-plagiarism is not cheating. For example, even though you submit the same essay more than one time, it IS still your own work. You don’t steal anything from anyone. Many colleges have no rule for this. Presenting the same paper more than one time is order to get more useful feedbacks. Presenting the same paper is the way that students can find commonalities between unrelated intellectual disciplines; therefore, submitting the same essay to another class is not cheating. As long as there is no rule for self-plagiarism, it is acceptable to resent the same paper.

Different colleges have different rules for cheating. For example, there is a statement about integrity from Miami University, which is “ submitting the identical or substantially the same assignment to fulfill the requirements for two or more courses without approval of the instructors involved, or submitting the identical or substantially the same assignment from previously completed course to fulfill requirements for another course without the approval of instructor of the later course is violating academic integrity” . Page 6) This rule define self-plagiarism is cheating.

However, City College of San Francisco defines cheating as ‘ taking an examination or performing an assigned, evaluated task in a dishonest way, such as by having improper access to answers. (page 6) This rule has nothing to do with self-plagiarism. It doesn’t define that self-plagiarism is one kind of cheating. Actually, the students in City College are presenting the same paper to different class sometimes and some professors allow them to do it. When people have the common sense about something, they make the law to rooter or prevent something.

The fact is that many colleges have no rule for this action, which means they still think this kind of action is acceptable and is not cheating. The rule is made by the professors in colleges. Since they don’t think this action is harmful, we should be able to take this action to reach useful goals such as getting different feedbacks from different professors and improving the essay by different ways. In fact, many professors are doing the same thing, which is recycling the same paper multiple times. Professors do this for purpose. Students also can use this experience for their academic success.

If you were in high school or middle school and submitted the same paper several times, would consider this action is cheating. “ You are an academic, and you are presenting the same idea at a bunch of different conferences. Then it is clearly not dishonest. ” (Page 10, Lang) It depends on the purpose. The reason why they do this is for Academic Communication. In addition, we have to test our idea. “ Academics give presentation multiple times because we are testing our ideas, and want to see how different audiences react to them before we put them in final form. (Page 11, Lang) Presenting the same paper is order to get some good ideas from people so than they can rewrite it and make it better. Since professors Can do it, it is also acceptable for student to get the same experience. Professors present the same paper for academic purpose. As students, we need to improve our grade. Getting feedbacks from different professors is one way to improve our essays. More feedbacks we get, more we realize how much we can improve. When this process happens, students don’t steal anything from somewhere.

They improve their essays base on their own work. “ Some might call your action self-plagiarism, but the very premise of stealing your own creative property is absurd. You are not betraying the publics 8, Kilometers) The base principle of cheating is stealing. It is not logical saying tattoo are stealing your own thing because it is your creation and you don’t lie to anyone about what you are writing in the essay. Everything is connected in some ways. It is good for student to see commonalities between unrelated intellectual disciplines.

For example, if a student can see the commonality between math and physic, it will be easy for him to solve a lot of problems because he can switch the method between math and physic. Some methods of math work efficiently for physic; some methods of physic work efficiently for math. Therefore, it would be an advantage for students. Sometimes presenting the same paper multiple times is because students want to compare different ideas so than they can find the common mistakes they make. In other words, it is a useful skill for students to develop.