The Effects of Plagiarism

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Plagiarism, one of the main problems of academic life, is a simple subject to describe, but hard to avoid. It can be simply put in this way as in The Cambridge Dictionary; to use another person's idea or a part of their work and pretend that it is your own. As defined clearly in the dictionary, plagiarism is nothing but stealing someone else’s work. And yes, it is wrong to plagiarize, but most of the people continue to do it. One of the reasons for this is the ones who plagiarize don’t know what plagiarism is. As Evans J. writes: ‘Everyone seems to know plagiarism is wrong, including those who commit the offence, but few know how to completely define it…’ As these people don’t know what plagiarism is, they’re also unaware of the effects of it. It may seem harmless to plagiarize, however it has devastating effects not only on the committer, but maybe on the ones that are surrounding him.

Focusing on the effects on the plagiarizer, we can start by thinking academically. As the competition between candidates for projects or jobs that require special qualifications is at a high rate, plagiarism is one of the major concerns for falling behind in this race. Using someone else’s work for a report or a project prevents us from gaining new knowledge. By working on a subject of our own, we acquire new skills. And sometimes, our work might not be completely correct. However failing and making mistakes is good way to learn, because we know what we did wrong. The experience coming from our own mistakes is simply better than high scores.

Lack of knowledge leads to another problem caused by plagiarism, which is the slowing down development. Plagiarizing is taking other’s work, not creating something new. As the rate of plagiarism in...

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...igns and anything that you can imagine. Although each of them has effects that differ from each other, none of them is beneficial to plagiarizer and the one who is under the influence of it. Overall putting an original work rather than taking a shortcut is by far the best and the guaranteed choice and the feeling of achievement that comes from it is priceless.

Works Cited
Evans, J. (2000). The New Plagiarism in Higher Education: From Selection to Reflection

"Cause and Effect Essay - Plagiarism and Cheating." 123HelpMe.com. 27 Dec 2009 (The idea of knowledge)

"Cause and Effect Essay - Plagiarism and Cheating." 123HelpMe.com. 27 Dec 2009 (The idea of responsibility)

Xinhua News Agency | August 5, 2004 | Copyright 2004 Xinhua News Agency

http://ayaz.wordpress.com/2006/12/23/side-effects-of-plagiarism/

The idea comes from the MasterCard® commercial.

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