Accused of plagiarism, will you my defense?

Question

OK, before I say anything, I do not want you to even "answer" if your just going to bash me and tell me things I already know. if you believe you are innocent until proven guilty and will help me, I thank you very much in advanced.

I handed in a paper for my Music Appreciation about a month ago. The assignment was to go to a classical music concert then write a review. I attended a concert and did the paper, handed it in and havn't thought about it since. Today my professor asked to talk with me after class. She said she suspects plagirarism in my paper and we set up an appointment to talk to the department chair on Monday. I was pretty surprised to hear this so I went back and looked at my paper. I didn't recall any sort of misconduct but it turns out I did take a few other peoples opinions about the artist into my paper. I should of put quotes around them I know but obviously I didn't. Basically I admit I did take a quote from someone else and put in my paper but I didn't intend o

n this happening. I did not mean to try to take credit for these others peoples inputs. When I go to this appointment on Monday I am going to be honest and try to explain to them I did not really even want to take credit for these other peoples remarks. Can anyone give me advice on things to say and things to suggest to the chair so I do not have anything happen to me aside from getting a 0 (I strongly disagree that should happen ).I will accept a 0 as punishment but anything else would be extremely unfair considering I took mabey 2 things someone else said.

Answer 1

Direct quoting is totally unacceptable. Welcome to the "real" academic world.

Day-to-day life, it happens all the time, but in your case too bad. You're screwed.

Answer 2

If you made those opinions look like they were your own, technically that is plagiarism. If you seriously didn't realize that you were supposed to do that, you could argue that it was a mechanical citation error and that you weren't intending to make their ideas yours, but that you did a bad job with your citations. That's all you have as a defense but in the future, always cite your sources. The more sources, the better a paper looks anyways.

Question: Were these things other students said, or something said at the concert? The reason, the profs knew they were taken must have been because either other students said it or it was said at the musical event. If it was said at the musical event, say that you thought that quotes from people from the event were assumed to be obviously not your work since it was a review and that was clear based on the nature of the assignment. If it was other students work, you might have a problem.

Answer 3

My guess is you did plagiarize, even considering your innocent before guilty standard. And I'm not bashing you.

First. The assignment was to REVIEW a classical music concert that you attended. Thus, the paper was intended to be based on your personal observations and the opinions derived from that observation. Nothing in that assignment suggests that the instructor was looking for the review from the context of a third-person account.

Second. It's not just the lack of quotes. Quotes only indicate a person's exact words. You can paraphrase something and still plagiarize. Besides quotes, you also failed to attribute any of the statements of other people's opinions to those people. (e.g., according to Tom, the performance lacked energy and passion). It's this complete failure of attribution that has you in trouble.

In sum. You (1) based your personal review on something other than your personal observations and perceptions, which was the whole nature of the assignment, and (2) you failed to attribute words of others, implying they were yours and based on your perceptions/observations, (3) your assignment clearly does not call for third-party accounts as it is a personal review.

None of us are looking at your paper, but considering a college-educated professor was able to ascertain from reviewing your paper that you apparently lifted the thoughts of another and supplanted them into your paper as your own...that's not good.

Hard for us to completely judge you, since we aren't reading the paper and you are not forthcoming of whom, "as it turns out" you obtained the words from. But, I think you are in a bind considering the nature of the paper does not call for the opinion of others to begin with.

Good luck to you. You may not have intended to, but acts of omission are indicators of intellectual dishonesty also.

Edit: I think your best course of action is admit your wrongdoing by neglect and that you had never done a review assignment. Ask for an opportunity to do a rewrite for reduced credit. If the rest of your work has not been tainted, refer them to taht that you had no malice in your intent. My concern is still the original problem of how this person suspected you of plagiarism to begin with...obviously something you wrote was CLEARLY plagiarized. Good luck to you. This is not likely to have permanent impact if you do not repeat your error and are more cautious in the future.

Answer 4

Why would you use other people's comments in a review? Citations or not, a review is what you think of a performance, not what other people thought about it.

Answer 5

did you use something written or spoken? if written, your goose is cooked. If spoken the use of quotes would be inappropriate unless you were sure the quote was accurate. Quoting someone for something they didn't say is libel. good luck.