Question 1:

Please take a look at the following information below and determine whether is there any plagiarism issue.

Draft of student:

Chairman Mao no doubt had charisma—otherwise, he could not have successfully led the army in its fight against the nationalists during the civil war of 1945–1949. Whether he was an effective administrator, however, is doubtful. Many, if not most, of his executive decisions appear to have been based on ideology rather than knowledge of the issues. Morris provided a representative example: Mao’s decision to increase steel production after Soviet supplies were cut off owing to a rift with Krushchev. According to Morris, Mao moved “40 million peasants off the land to build backyard foundries,” which crippled food production and resulted in large-scale famine. It seems reasonable to conclude, therefore, that Mao knew little about agriculture, the nutritional needs of the people, or steel production. More damning is that he seemed unconcerned when his efforts to produce steel in backyards caused millions of Chinese to die of starvation. 

Source:

—from Morris, I. (2010). Why the West rules—for now. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 

To make matters worse, Mao fell out with Krushchev. Cut off from Soviet aid, he tried to match Western steel production by pulling 40 million peasants off the land to build backyard foundries, smelting whatever ores they could find locally and even melting their pots and pans to forge homemade steel. Little of what they produced was usable, but no one dared say so . . . . “Communism is paradise,” the peasants were expected to sing; “the People’s Communes are the bridge to it.” But there was trouble in paradise. When not singing, the people were starving. . . . According to . . . [an] informant, “The worst thing that happened during the famine was this: parents would decide to allow the old and the young to die first . . . a mother would say to her daughter, ‘You have to go and see your granny in heaven.’ They stopped giving the girl-children food. They just gave them water.” 

*Acknowledgement: This example is from Taylor & Francis (2014).

Question 2:

Please take a look at the following information below and determine whether is there any plagiarism issue.

Draft of student:

In the postmodern perspective, language is completely arbitrary and ultimately meaningless. Consequently, what we have to look for in texts and in speech is not some concrete expression of surface meaning but rather what lies behind or underneath the words, which through the postmodern lens is always a political expression deeply embedded in the power relations associated with dominance and sex. Perelman, however, resisted this perspective, arguing that “definitions can never be considered arbitrary.” If individual words are “bound up” in the psychosocial, paradigmatic dynamic of human interaction, then the entire postmodern approach to language seems fundamentally flawed. 

Source:

—from Perelman, C. (1982). The realm of rhetoric. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. 

Logicians tend to consider definitions as arbitrary; but this is true only in a formal system where signs are supposed to have only the meaning which is attributed to them by convention. It is never true in ordinary language, except in the case of scholarly or scientific words that are introduced into the language with a given meaning. If a word already exists, its definition can never be considered arbitrary, for the word is bound up in the language with previous classifications, with value judgments that give it, in advance, an affective, positive or negative coloration. Indeed, if it were otherwise, we could not understand the constant discussion about the meanings of words. . . . 

*Acknowledgement: This example is from Taylor & Francis (2014).

Question 3:

Please take a look at the following information below and determine whether is there any plagiarism issue.

Draft of student:

There is a fundamental incompatibility between religion and science. Religion is based on faith, whereas science is based on close observation of the natural world, development of theories to explain those observations, and tests of those theories that can be replicated. Owing to this incompatibility, followers of the world’s religions are generally hostile toward science because it threatens their faith. This hostility seems to be strongest in monotheistic religions like Islam and Christianity. As Charles Freeman notes in The Closing of the Western Mind, early Christians “would often pride themselves on their lack of education” (120). 

Source:

—from Freeman, C. (2002).

The closing of the Western mind. New York: Vintage. The idea of being open to “faith” is a powerful one; the longing to surrender the self to another who can provide certainty is an enduring part of the human psyche. However, for those who believe in the importance of using reason to define the truth, this surrender must raise concerns. . . . [Nevertheless] it became the mark of the committed Christian to be able to reject rational thought, and even the evidence of empirical experience. Christians would often pride themselves on their lack of education, associating independent philosophical thinking with the sin of pride. . . . So here are the roots of the conflict between religion and science that still pervades debates on Christianity to this day. 

*Acknowledgement: This example is from Taylor & Francis (2014).

Question 4:

Please take a look at the following information below and determine whether is there any plagiarism issue.

Draft of student:

Thomas Kuhn (1996) asserts that scientific research "is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like" (p. 5). Because this assumption is the foundation of most scientific knowledge, scientists are willing to go to great lengths to defend it, even to the point of suppressing substantial new information that would undermine the basic proposition (p. 5).

Source:

Normal science, the activity in which most scientists inevitably spend almost all their time, is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like. Much of the success of the enterprise derives from the community's willingness to defend that assumption, if necessary at considerable cost. Normal science, for example, often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments (5).

(Kuhn, T. (1996.) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. University of Chicago Press.)

*Acknowledgement: This example is from https://www.niu.edu/academic-integrity/faculty/committing/examples/index.shtml.

Question 5:

Please take a look at the following information below and determine whether is there any plagiarism issue.

Draft of student:

Colonialism had a destabilizing effect on what had been a number of ethnic groups that is still being felt in African politics. In the 1870s European nations were bickering over themselves about the spoils of Africa. Between 1870 and World War I alone, the European scramble for Africa resulted in the adding of around one-fifth of the land area of the globe to its overseas colonial possessions. Prior to European influence, national borders were not much of a concern, with Africans generally following the practice of other areas of the world, such as the Arabian peninsula, where a group's territory was congruent with its military or trade influence.

Source 1:

Colonialism had a destabilizing effect on what had been a number of ethnic groups that is still being felt in African politics. Before European influence, national borders were not much of a concern, with Africans generally following the practice of other areas of the world, such as the Arabian peninsula, where a group's territory was congruent with its military or trade influence. ("Africa: Politics." Wikipedia. 31 Aug. 2005. Retrieved Aug. 31, 2005, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africa#Politics)

Source 2:

In the 1870s European nations were bickering over themselves about the spoils of Africa. In order to prevent further conflict between them, they convened at the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 to lay down the rules on how they would partition up Africa between themselves. Between 1870 and World War I alone, the European scramble for Africa resulted in the adding of around one-fifth of the land area of the globe to its overseas colonial possessions. (Shah, Anup. "Introduction." Conflicts in Africa. 27 Feb. 2005. Retrieved Aug. 31, 2005, from http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/Africa/Intro.asp)

*Acknowledgement: This example is from https://www.niu.edu/academic-integrity/faculty/committing/examples/index.shtml.

Question 6:

Please take a look at the following information below and determine whether is there any plagiarism issue.

Draft of student:

The readers of technical documentation manuals do not read those manuals in linear order. They are impatient to be about their work, jump from the text to the task and back, and only stop to read in-depth if they have no other choice.

Reference: Dillon, A. (1994). Designing usable electronic text: Ergonomic aspects of human information usage. London: Taylor & Francis.

Source:

At this stage the reading strategy adopted by the reader depends on the particulars of the task. The tendency to 'get on with it' seems firmly established in users of manuals and the present sample reported moving freely from manual to system in order to achieve their goal. Only three readers manifested any tendency to read around an area or fully read a section before moving on and even these admitted that they would be tempted to skim, and tend to get bored if they felt that they were not resolving their problems and only read complete sections if all else failed.

Reference: Dillon, A. (1994). Designing usable electronic text: Ergonomic aspects of human information usage. London: Taylor & Francis.

*Acknowledgement: This example is from https://plagiarism.iu.edu/practiceTestResults.php.

Question 7:

Please take a look at the following information below and determine whether is there any plagiarism issue.

Draft of student:

Many people may believe that humans have always had language, but this may not be the case. All the available research suggests that in the history of mankind language is fairly recent, probably emerging about 40,000 years ago among the Cro-Magnons. English, a member of the Indo-European language group, which emerged even more recently— about 6,000 years ago in the Transcaucus area of eastern Anatolia, which is modern-day Turkey—is more recent still. In fact, the modern English that we speak today is only about 300 years old. 

Source:

—from Williams, J. (2005). The teacher’s grammar book, 2nd edition. Mahwah, NJ: LEA. 

Research has shown that Indo-European emerged in the Transcaucus area of eastern Anatolia about 6,000 years ago. Language itself predates Indo-European by many thousands of years, but we have not been able to look sufficiently far into the past to trace its history beyond this point. Scholars generally agree that Cro-Magnon man used language 40,000 years ago, but there is significant disagreement over whether Neanderthals did. The question of when mankind began using language is important because it can help us understand human evolution. . . . [S]ome scholars argue that language evolved from preexisting cognitive abilities, whereas others argue that no evidence exists for this view and that language seems to have emerged rapidly with the appearance of the Cro-Magnons. If the latter view is correct, language has a very short history. 

*Acknowledgement: This example is from Taylor & Francis (2014).

Question 8:

Please take a look at the following information below and determine whether is there any plagiarism issue.

Draft of student:

When you design a problem in an educational setting, you will realize that design problems are usually among the most complex and ill-structured kinds of problems (Jonassen, 2000, p. 80).

Source:

When you design a problem in an educational setting, you will realize that design problems are usually among the most complex and ill-structured kinds of problems (Jonassen, 2000, p. 80).

Jonassen, D. (2000). Toward a design theory of problem solving. Educational Technology Research and Development, 48(4), 63-85.

*Acknowledgement: This example is from https://plagiarism.iu.edu/practiceTestResults.php.

Question 9:

Please take a look at the following information below and determine whether is there any plagiarism issue.

Draft of student:

Universities nationwide have implemented policies that prohibit romantic relationships between students and faculty, and almost universally the argument for these policies is that, first and foremost, any such relationship is “asymmetrical” in that the faculty member has more “power” than the student and therefore is in a “controlling” position. Exactly what the faculty member controls is never stated explicitly, but even a half-wit can recognize the unstated implication that the issue is sex. That these policies seem specifically designed to protect young coeds from lecherous male professors should offend all reasonable adults—males who are clearly the target of sexist politics and females who by virtue of these policies are reduced to automatons who lack both reason and will. As Abramson (2007) noted, romance is a matter of conscience, the ability—and indeed the freedom—to make decisions for oneself upon becoming an adult. On this account, the freedom to choose with whom one has a romantic relationship should be as sacred as the freedom to choose one’s religion. 

Source:

—from Abramson, P. (2007). Romance in the ivory tower: The rights and liberty of conscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 

I have something more universal in mind than the question of whether students should be permitted to romance their professors, or vice versa. It is something germane to all the deeply personal choices we make—namely, the rights of conscience. That is, the right we rely on when making choices relevant to personal autonomy, with the belief in God being a prime example. Outrage, no doubt, would emerge if an institution prohibited the belief in God. God is a deeply personal matter outside the reach of a university. It is my position that we should be no less indignant when a university prohibits who we can romance (presuming, of course, that the partnership involves consenting adults in a relationship void of tangible harm). 

*Acknowledgement: This example is from Taylor & Francis (2014).

Question 10:

Please take a look at the following information below and determine whether is there any plagiarism issue.

Draft of student:

Scholars in the school of new classical economics, which emerged in the 1970s, focus on the belief that the school of Keynesian economics is misguided. New classical scholars assert that the economy is never unbalanced, as Keynesian scholars believe, but instead that changes in an economy result from people's changing their spending habits as they interpret the news about the world.

Source:

New classical economics. The original theoretical impetus was the charge that Keynesian economics lacks microeconomic foundations -- i.e. its assertions are not founded in basic economic theory. This school emerged during the 1970s. This school asserts that it does not make sense to claim that the economy at any time might be "out-of-equilibrium". Fluctuations in aggregate variables follow from the individuals in the society continuously re-optimizing as new information on the state of the world is revealed.

("Macroeconomics." Wikipedia. 18 Aug. 2005. 31 Aug. 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroeconomics.)

*Acknowledgement: This example is from https://www.niu.edu/academic-integrity/faculty/committing/examples/index.shtml.