<p>Here’s my two cents about the motivation of college freshmen and it needs to be noted once again that I teach transitional (read: remedial) courses. In our local high schools, teachers have large student loads–between 175 and 225. There are not enough hours in the week to grade any kind of meaningful writing assingments of any length, so kids arrive in college with very little writing experience. Additionally, if these teachers do assign papers, they do not have the time to do much checking to find plagiarism. The HS papers are often evaluating and comparing literature (and may involve student opinion) rather than researching a new topic and writing something that is more factual in nature.</p>
<p>In our comp 101 classes, plagiarism is covered quite thoroughly. We even have a little tutorial on our college Web site that is required for many classes. However, what I find is that students somehow think that they are so clever that their professors will not catch them if they plagiarize. As I stated before, they do not realize that we get to know how they write, and while we are thrilled when they make progress, they will not go from transitional to professional in one semester. Many of the students I have caught plagiarizing have copied a strange idiom or other phrase that an 18-year-old would not typically use.</p>