How to avoid plagiarism
Using your own ideas
Should I use my own ideas?
This is a question that lots of students ask. The answer is: It depends.
It depends on…
- the type of assignment you’re doing - A business report, a discursive essay, a literature review, a lab report, a reflective journal, an annotated bibliography, etc. – each of these will require a different type of approach which may or may not involve you giving your own opinion.
- your area of study - Some areas of study are all about people’s opinions and require you to evaluate these opinions and to start forming your own. Others areas may be more about learning established and accepted ideas or knowledge that are less controversial or less likely to be questioned.
- your level of study - As you move from 1st to 2nd, 3rd and subsequent years, the way you deal with the information and ideas in your study may change. At higher levels of study students are more likely to be involved in discovering new ideas or testing new hypotheses, while in the earlier years, students are often being introduced to some of the basic concepts of their discipline or area of study.
What if I don’t have any of my own ideas?
Kate Chanock from the Humanities Academic Skills Unit discusses the issues of giving own opinions in her document: Using Sources In Your Writing (PDF 49KB). In this article she explains that students sometimes confuse ‘giving their own opinions’ with ‘being original’.
You are expected to use other people’s ideas and it is not a problem if your essay has lots of references. What is important is that you acknowledge that the ideas come from another person and secondly, that you demonstrate your understanding of the ideas and don’t simply cut and paste chunks of their text into your work.
As Kate Chanock (2004, p.2) explains, what is original about your work is;
- the way you relate ideas and information from the sources to the question you have been asked;
- the way you explain the ideas, and your choice of examples and evidence;
- your testing of other people’s ideas against evidence, and against the ideas of others;
- your judgement of the strengths and limitations of other people’s thinking;
- your ability to ask questions arising out of your encounters with other people’s ideas;
- your ability to apply the ideas of others in new contexts; and
- your ability to construct answers of your own.
Using sources in your writing is a bit like weaving: you use threads from various different places, but the new pattern that you weave is your own.
Reference: Chanock, K. (2004). Using sources in Your Writing. (PDF 49KB) Humanities Academic Skills Unit (Handout for students). Accessed 25/1/05.
