The student essay excerpts below are based on the following passage from a research source.
Sample Passage from Wikivoyage, a crowd-sourced website about travel destinations:
Dominant themes in the national park system in California are mountain ranges and deserts. As a result some are off the beaten path for a state that is a tourist attraction, although highways have been designed to improve access even to more remote areas. For example the highway system surrounding Yosemite connects it to the more populated Central Valley; the Yosemite Valley itself has been developed for tourism. The offshore Channel Islands have remained remote, as have the Pinnacles, while Death Valley is a popular destination despite its distance from cities.
The excerpt from Wikivoyage is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
The MLA citation for the research source is:
“United States National Parks.” Wikivoyage. Wikimedia Foundation, 3 Nov. 2021, en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/United_States_national_parks.
Read each student essay example below and decide if the student has plagiarized or if they used the research source correctly and did not plagiarize. Write your answers to the questions in the space provided. Then self-assess by reading the librarians’ answers, which are provided in the Appendix section titled “Answers to Self Assessment — Is This Plagiarism?”.
Student Essay Example 1
The popularity of the various National Parks in California can vary depending on how close they are to highways and sometimes freeways have been engineered to enhance egress to isolated locations of the National Parks. In one case, the freeways around Yosemite Valley join the Park to the populous Central Valley and have resulted in the Yosemite Valley itself being built-up to support hordes of tourists.
1. Is Student Essay Example 1 an example of plagiarism or not? Write your answers on the lines provided.
If it is plagiarism, explain what type of plagiarism you think it is:
Student Essay Example 2
Californians as well as tourists to California enjoy the wide range of natural landscapes that are protected by the National Parks but large numbers of tourists can create problems for some parks. Fans of the national parks who share their expertise online have noted that because many of the parks in California are in the mountains or deserts, “some are off the beaten path for a state that is a tourist attraction” (United States National Parks). But they also point out that Yosemite National Park has been made accessible to more people because of the highways that were built around it and that Death Valley is a popular park even though people have to drive a long way from the cities to get there (United States National Parks). This shows the role that transportation plays in the popularity of National Parks and suggests that parks that are easy to access may need more protections in place to reduce the effects of tourism on the environment.
2. Is Student Essay Example 2 an example of plagiarism or not?
If it is plagiarism, explain what type of plagiarism you think it is:
Student Essay Example 3
Visiting the National Parks that are located in California is a great way to appreciate the natural landscape and to take a break from the hustle and bustle of the typical tourist attractions. But you might be surprised about which parks draw a big crowd. The offshore Channel Islands have remained remote, as have the Pinnacles, while Death Valley is a popular destination despite its distance from cities.
3. Is Student Essay Example 3 an example of plagiarism not?
If it is plagiarism, explain what type of plagiarism you think it is:
Student Essay Example 4
The National Parks in California are often judged on how crowded they are or how pristine, on how convenient they are to access or how remote. To increase the use of National Parks like Yosemite, highways have even been built around them and amenities have been developed for tourists. But the National Parks in California should also be judged for how well they help the community to engage with the complex stories about how the land used to establish the parks was only available because of the violent removal of Indigenous populations. Teaching the public this type of information about the National Parks may be considered controversial by some, but actually it brings American Indians back into the ‘national story’ that the US National Parks System tells in the parks. And that effort opens the way for inclusion to become the default mode for understanding the populations of the country. This can lead to even deeper connections to the land and to each other than a simple hike in the wilderness can accomplish. This could make National Parks even more appealing to tourists looking for an enriching experience.
4. Is Student Essay Example 4 an example of plagiarism or not?
If it is plagiarism, explain what type of plagiarism you think it is:
Self-Assessment Reflection Questions:
When you have answered the questions above about whether each example is plagiarism or not, and you have compared your answers to the librarians’ answers in the Appendix section titled “Answers to Self Assessment — Is This Plagiarism?”, now take a few minutes to reflect on how you did.
Write your answers to the following questions for yourself. You won’t submit them to the library, but your answers to these reflections questions may be useful when you are completing the Summative Activity at the end of this workshop.
5. What are some questions you still have about plagiarism?
6. How well did you do at recognizing plagiarism?
