DeVoss and Rosati

DeVoss and Rosati address the issue of plagiarism: the definition of plagiarism, why students do it, and how it can be fixed. The authors start of by sharing stories of teachers who have caught their students plagiarizing. They go on to explain that most students do not understand what plagiarism is and at times are not sure if their work and research applies to the rules of plagiarism. For example, in the first story Professor Annette caught three students who downloaded a paper, printed it off and handed it in. She told her class that there had been three students that had plagiarized and they had to meet her in her office or they would fail the course. Professor Annette had 14 students show up to her class thinking they had plagiarized when in reality they had not. Rebecca Howard stated that many students who do research, manipulate it and piece their work with the original work are often accused of plagiarizing when they had just engaged in positive research activity called “patchwork.” Malloch described plagiarizing as “kidnapping” instead of theft because work is borrowed and mimicked as a result of a stage in writing development. DeVoss and Rosati state that often times professors ask students for correct or original which may lead the student to plagiarize by thinking that their idea is not original and correct and that they have to look at other written works and write something similar in order to obtain those requirements. The internet has also contributed in making plagiarizing easier because students are now able to download and copy and paste which tempts students into wanting to plagiarize. In conlusion, the authors suggests that teachers should have a clearer explanation to students as to what is allowed in research and what is assumed as plagiarism and that they should each students appropriate techniques for research. Overall I agree with the authors because often times I have wondered if what I was writing was considered plagiarism or not; I do think teachers should further explain the regulations of research.

 

 

Hans Rosling Summary

Hans Rosling: Let my dataset change your mindset summary

 

Hans Rosling uses statistics to expose myths about the developing world and the western world by showing the current relationship between income per person and health. According to students the developing world is large family short life and the western world is long life small family. Rosling states that college professors have been teaching students erroneous information about both the developing world and the western world. Hans Rosling uses bubble charts as a medium to inform his audience. Rosling presents the information by regions; once he breaks the regions up into countries we are able to see the vast differences. For example, in Africa the graph shows that there is a significant difference between Sierra Leone that shows the least amount of income (GDP of approximately $500) in correlation with the low probability of child survival(70%) and Mauritius which shows the greatest amount of income (GDP of about $10,000) and child survival (98%).

 

Hans Rosling shows his audience that fifty years ago there was a greater consistency between the amount of income and health but now some other countries caught up in the health section and not necessarily had higher income (e.g. Mexico). With his findings Rosling helps the audience understand how the world has advanced. This shows us (the audience) that we should investigate and keep up with current affairs instead of just accepting what we are told as the truth. I think Rosling’s presentation greatly informed the audience about current global information on health and economy.

Sommers student composition

The style of teacher’s comments on student’s literary works is very vague and in fact, often times, alters the purpose of the writer. The writer goes from wanting to express his/ her own thoughts to wanting to follow the style and guidelines of the professor.  Sommers intends to help teachers improve their comments on student essays and written works. This will help students be able to revise their papers better instead of just "patching up” their writing. The author uses two examples of some written teacher comments of student essays to demonstrate how little specific teachers are when they revise student papers. The author points out comments like “awkward” and “word choice” on the paper to emphasize her point. Sommers mentions, how can a student effectively revise their paper when teachers provide little detail to their comments and contradict themselves.

The author concludes that just how teachers always tell students to be more specific while writing they should also be more specific themselves and try to help the student develop their writing ideas instead of trying to make them do what they want.

Comments help writers understand what they cannot see by editing a paper themselves. It helps give a different point of view and understand how he/she can revise it for the audience to be able to understand. Generic comments are not useful in essays because it sends a message that makes the student think that all they have to do is edit the paper instead of develop their ideas. I agree with the authors point of view because as a student I have often been confused with teachers comments on my papers, I think students would write better papers if professors also included betters comments.