Plagiarism

It is a good thing that the schools in Singapore are starting early by teaching students about plagiarism.

As students usually gather information from the web for their school projects, it is important that they are understand and respect the rights of the author, as well as to give credit.

Primary school pupils are merely children of 7 to 12 years old, they probably do not know that it is wrong for them to ‘copy and paste’ certain information from the web and pass it off as a completed work of their own. Thus, it is essential for the students to know that copying information from the web is as bad as physically copying a friend’s work.

In higher-level institutions such as polytechnics and universities, the penalties for plagiarism would normally range from having a fail grade, suspension, or even expulsion in the serious cases. Therefore, it is vital for students to have a firm understanding about plagiarism at the primary level, to prevent them from committing the mistake unknowingly when they are older.

Yap Si Ling (100832P)