Avoiding plagiarism in college

We all know how serious is to do plagiarism in an assignment that we have had, we can get a zero in our homework grade and, in the worst of the cases, we can fail the course. Along with the numerous ways to do plagiarism there are also some tips that will prevent us to do plagiarism, some of those strategies include: doing paraphrase, correct citation of sources, and to do quotation when we use ideas that do not belong to us. The first strategy to avoid plagiarism seems to be one of the more adequate for people who write a lot of essays and have to get information from the web or some other authors. Paraphrasing is when you take the idea of somebody and you explain it with your own words but at the same time, you are not changing the original meaning. The citation strategy is always required when we do research papers and sometimes essays, it consists of using the APA format to show where these ideas come from and who the original author was. Paraphrasing can be a little bit easier to do because you do not need to specify all the details, and it also demonstrates that you understand the idea of this author by repeating it but in your own word. The last but not least is a quotation, as simple as put the quotes marks is to avoid plagiarism, you have to use it when you use a phrase that the author said in person or in a book. Now that you know how to avoid plagiarism, you ought to don`t do it.

Differences in Plagiarism between Peru and the United States

When we talk about plagiarism in the U.S it can be considered a serious theme for most of the people living here, the first time that I came here I received a workshop talking about how to avoid plagiarism and why the rules against it are so strict also, we studied the consequences of doing plagiarism. One of the rules gain my attention, and it was that I could be expelled if I commit plagiarism, even if it was not intentional I would have to pass several steps to prove that it was not my fault.

 Comparing the American system with the Peruvian system I could rapidly notice the huge difference between both, in America, students are more worried about learning new things or at least do an effort to understand what the professor is saying in the lecture, however, Peruvian students are more interested in parties, drinking and that kind of stuff rather than attend to classes, maybe this could be the reason why plagiarism in Peru, and all Latinoamerica, is not considered really bad or a crime. 

Peruvian students always are trying to create new ways to do plagiarism, and it is perceived as a wise way to get a good grade, one friend told me one time that why should he study if he can get a perfect score in the test just by doing plagiarism. Homework in colleges such as papers, essays and other sorts of writing tasks are often checked by the professor in order to detect plagiarism but in Peru I remember using Wikipedia as my source and just copy and pasting what was there without even read it and the professor is not going to say nothing about it, but here it will have bad consequences. 

What really makes the difference here is the ideology of being original and not steal the work of other but creating something really unique with our effort and skills, in Peru most of the time we are surrounded by the idea of the one who is the most cunny  will be the only one who will get the most benefits and avoiding the rules of the system is a way to get it, that is one of the reasons why to do plagiarism in Peru is not such a bad thing.