Plagiarism and The End of The Semester

https://writinglabnewsletter.org/archives/v21/21-6.pdf

As the semester has progressed, the amount of citations within papers has decreased. I'm sure this is due to the time constraints and pressure put on students; at least I hope it is. Whatever the case, a couple of things I've noticed that always seem to raise a red flag for me:

1. The student can't speak about their paper without reading it.

When I notice a student is relying on their paper during brainstorming sessions, I'll ask them to tell me what they want to say without looking at their piece. A couple times this semester, the students knowledge of the subject has seemed to vanish, they don't know anything about the research, and they become frustrated. This is either a sign that they haven't crafted a proper thesis, or perhaps plagerism.

2. The paper contains flashes of incredible writing surrounded by mediocrity.

This one is a bit more tough, but I've seen it twice in the last week. Now, I'm not saying that people can't write this way, but when I see a complex sentence using grammar rules I barely understand in one paragraph, and then the inability to use a comma in the rest of the paper, somethings up.

In both these cases, i never came right out and said what I thought, I instead spoke about citation rules in regards to paraphrasing. In all cases this semester, when I use the word paraphrase instead of plagiarize  the student has been more receptive to properly citing and even admitting that they borrowed from somewhere else. I'm there to help, not accuse them; that's the professors job.