PLAGIARISM:

Plagiarism is when someone copies another's material and passes it in as his or her own.  This is not to occur.  The teacher is interested in seeing what YOU can do, not in what someone else can do.  This is a  way of seeing that you are developing YOUR techniques for writing.  If  for some reason you are having a problem expressing yourself in words, you must seek assistance.  Teachers are not your enemy, they are your helpers.  Bring them your difficulties and ask for assistance; that is the way it is supposed to work. 

To plagiarize is to admit to being unable to do the work on your own, or to admit that you do not want to expend the energy to do the work asked of you.  Either way, there is a problem. 

There is also the question of fairness!  Do you want teachers to treat you unfairly?  If you say yes, you have no room for complaints, right?  If you say no, then why is it fair for you to act unfairly by pretending to do work that really belongs to someone else?  How fair would it be to fly in a plane with a pilot who plagiarized her papers, but really knows much less than her degree would lead you to believe?  The same goes for all professions.  How would you like to hire an electrician for your house, not knowing that he handed in work during his education that was not his.  Consequently his level of understanding is not what the degree in engineering says it is.  Is it fair for the electrician to pass himself off as being more knowledgeable than is true?  Furthermore, one cannot feel good about oneself if one does nothing.  One can only feel good about oneself when one has accomplished something by oneself.  For many different reasons, plagiarism is unacceptable.  If you are going to use the words of another, you must put them in quotations, and then write the name of the source on  your work cited page.

Teachers have a very good sense for when you are plagiarizing:  we have read a lot of papers during our university studies and while teaching school.  We have ways of checking where the information comes from.  We use the work cited page, but we also have at our disposal several plagiarism search engines on the internet.  If students plagiarize, they must be  prepared to accept ZERO for a mark.  THINK IT OVER!  Are  you really incapable of writing your owns word on paper?