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Hey there! Let's explore how to fund your future goals and how to write about your college research honestly.
Planning for college is an exciting step. There are several ways to pay for your education, including savings you set aside over time, and grants, which are free money from the government or schools that you do not have to pay back.
When you research college costs, you must share your findings honestly. Paraphrasing means rewriting someone else's facts in your own unique words, while plagiarism is copying their words directly without giving them credit.
To tell the difference, look closely at the sentence structure. If your sentence uses the exact same words and order as the source, it is plagiarism. If you explain the core idea using your own voice and sentence flow, it is a successful paraphrase.
A student reads this source sentence: 'Savings plans allow families to invest money early to cover future tuition costs.' Classify the following student response as plagiarism or paraphrasing: 'Families can invest funds early in savings plans to pay for future tuition.'
- Analyze the source sentence: 'Savings plans allow families to invest money early to cover future tuition costs.'
- Analyze the student's sentence: 'Families can invest funds early in savings plans to pay for future tuition.'
- Compare the vocabulary and sentence structure. The student changed 'allow' to 'can' and 'money' to 'funds', but kept almost the exact same structure and word order.
- Identify the issue: Simply swapping a few words (synonyms) while keeping the sentence structure identical is still considered plagiarism.
- Conclude that this student response is plagiarism because it does not express the idea in a brand new sentence structure.
