The professor will provide students the in-class essay (as an exam). If students memorizes many sentences from the book, and write it exactly same in the essay during the exam, is it plagarism? or cheating? just wondering
Sentences written by other people are unlikely to be great answers to the questions on an exam, unless the question can be answered by including quotations Then the quotations would be in quotes, so that wouldn’t be plagiarism. I can’t imagine anyone studies by memorizing entire sentences. Definitions, maybe.
It’s plagiarism if you don’t cite your source. It wouldn’t be plagiarism (or cheating) if you cited the textbook, but you’d probably lose points for failing to demonstrate your own understanding.
This is a great question for your professor.
If you have to ask…
It’s boring and reveals all the prof needs to know about your engagement with the subject.
I salute your plan to study up on the topic in advance, just bot the memorization thing (which will backfire, trust me).
Is this a high school or college test? I can’t imagine a college test where the questions will be so simple that memorized sentences from the text book could answer the question well. Tests often require you to use what you have learned and apply it to a new situation the professor presents to you. For example, he may give you a diagram and ask you to explain the process that is represented. Yesterday, my daughter had a test on a novel they read. The teacher had them compare the novel to a poem they did not study and hadn’t seen before. Memorization will not help you with that sort of test.
It seems that maybe you are worried about your ability to write in English. Unless this is a test in an English class, you should do you best to present good ideas, and even if the grammar has mistakes, hopefully the teacher will grade you on your knowledge of the material.
Memorizing what?
If a quote of someone you are using in your essay, then that is ok. However, if it is content, no. Memorizing does not equal learning something for understanding, critical reasoning, or application. A robot can memorize, a student thinks. How would you rephrase/explain what you would have memorized is going to stick in your head a lot longer than the memorized version.
And even if you do memorize something how hard is to say as Mr. X said in Y textbook, “Blah, blah, blah.” I never got marked down for giving too many attributions. But you do want to make sure that your professor actually thinks you understand the material. Usually questions can’t be answered by simply regurgitating texts.
I think the issue won’t be plagiarism but failing to answer the question. I’ve never heard of an essay question that can be answered accurately and completely using block quotes from the book. Usually professors assign essays because they want to find out what the student thinks and understands of the subject. An essay that was just a block citation from the textbook is the same as submitting a blank page in my opinion.
I’m not a professor though, so maybe there are professors who evaluate students based on their ability to transcribe textbooks.
“If students memorizes many sentences from the book, and write it exactly same in the essay during the exam, is it plagarism? or cheating?”
Technically plagiarism because it is word-for-word from the book.
But more importantly, this demonstrates that the student does not understand the US educational system. Being able to quote the text is not important on an essay exam. What is important is that the student demonstrates that he/she understands the concepts, and can synthesize an effective response to the question that the professor wrote. The words and ideas need to be your own.