How Students Can Check for Plagiarism in Their Assignments?

Being a student is not easy. There are too many sources of pressure on them. Their parent’s expectations, peer pressure, anxiety about being able to perform well, and strict teachers can make them feel very stressed.

This stress can result in unhealthy habits. A student may become rebellious in an attempt to run away from their stressors. Or they may resort to underhanded means to relieve the pressure on themselves. One such method is plagiarism in assignments.

Committing plagiarism to do an assignment makes it seem really easy. And students who don’t know better start indulging themselves. However, there are grave consequences of plagiarism which can hurt students in many ways. So, it is very important for students to learn how to avoid plagiarism and check their assignments before submitting them. Here’s how they can do that.

How to Check for Plagiarism in Assignments

Students can check for plagiarism in their assignments in the following ways.

1. Check Their References

The human brain is very mysterious. It is known to fabricate memories. These false memories can occur due to a number of reasons. However, that is not important. What is important is that it can result in students incorrectly remembering information from sources.

This often leads to incorrect citations which is counted as plagiarism. Hence, to deal with such plagiarism students have to check their sources and find out whether they are accurate or not.

This is done by following the citation and checking whether the cited information actually exists in the original source. If it does, then well and good, if it doesn’t then that means some plagiarism has occurred.

2. Utilize a Plagiarism Checker

A plagiarism checker online can help students to find the most common types of plagiarism such as:

• Verbatim plagiarism
• Source-based plagiarism
• Paraphrased plagiarism

And more. This is actually a really simple technique to use. Students need only visit Google and search for a plagiarism checker. They will see a lot of free tools on the front page that they can use.

Many of these tools don’t even require registration so students can use them with ease.

A plagiarism checker online generates a report after checking the content. This report shows how much plagiarism exists in the assignment and provides links to the sources that the content was taken.

As such students can take this info and use it to cite any sources that they forgot to reference. In this way, they can protect themselves from the consequences of plagiarism.

3. Check for Inconsistencies

Students are only human, they can make mistakes and they are prone to getting carried away with their emotions. This often leads to them tackling their assignment in small parts and after doing research in short bursts.

This method of writing an assignment can introduce inconsistencies in the writing style of students. Unfortunately, that is usually a tell-tale sign of plagiarism and teachers may become suspicious.

To avoid that hassle altogether, students should proofread the final draft of their work before submitting it. Any inconsistencies will pop out during a reading session. Be sure to hold this session after a period of rest so that your mind is fresh.

Inconsistencies in writing style can also mean that a student unconsciously copied someone and committed accidental plagiarism. So, a reading session checking for these inconsistencies will help find such plagiarism as well.

Conclusion

These were three methods of checking plagiarism for students. They are quite simple and straightforward. The tip about using a plagiarism checker is quite useful in particular. By applying these tips before submitting an assignment, students can check their work for plagiarism.

For more tips about improving students, you can read articles on our blog.