In Brent Staples thesis “Cutting and Pasting: A Senior Thesis By (Insert Name)” (2010) Staples informs his readers that plagiarism has become a major problem in different college students writings. He proves this by showing the evidence given to him by different college professors, and what they have told him about their student’s writings. The purpose of this is to inform college students on how this is major problem and should stop. The intended audience is college professors and college students.
Overall after reading “Cutting and Pasting: A Senior Thesis By (Insert Name)” We are not shocked that this is a problem. Whenever a student is assigned to write a paper, they usually end up doing their research online. So, it becomes easy for a copy and pastes something over when they get stuck. The in class writing assignment mentioned in the beginning by the professor to get an accurate, internet free reading is a great idea.
We believe the main focus of the reading was to inform his readers that plagiarism has become a major problem in different college student’s writings. He states” A friend who teaches at a well-known eastern university told me recently that plagiarism was turning him into a cop” (147). His friend the professor then describes how he has evidence proving it “He begins the semester collecting evidence, in the form of an in-class essay that gives him a sense of how well students think and write, He looks back at the samples later when students turn in papers that feature their own, less-than-perfect prose alongside expertly written passages lifted verbatim from the Web” (147). From what we can tell after reading this the issue is only going to worsen. One solution we can think of is to give some type of guidance to student’s just starting college on how to write a paper without going on the internet.
