The problem
Plagiarism occurs because students have insufficiently developed their writing skills.
The solution
Writing well involves skills that you can learn and develop throughout university.
A few tips to get you started:
- Make an appointment with Academic Skills for one-to-one support or attend a writing workshop.
- Organise yourself well enough so that you are able to spend time re-writing and editing your draft.
- Instead of using quotations, practice expressing information or ideas in your own words. This demonstrates that you have understood and are able to interpret it.
- Look at the way in which writers in your discipline use language and try to emulate them.
- Learn to use the specialised language of your field correctly.
- Try to vary your expression. For instance, don’t use ‘however’ every time you use a transition signal.
- Write using a dictionary and a thesaurus.
- Learn how to write well-constructed paragraphs. (See Five Steps to Better Paragraphs.)
- Develop your skills.
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