Meet the Copycats
Last year, when the theme of the contest was “Behind the Mask,” roughly half the essays I read had portions of the Wikipedia page for “mask” copied and pasted directly into them, most with nary a quotation mark, let alone a proper citation. These became quite easy to spot (and reject) on contact.
The more insidious plagiarisers were harder to detect, but detect them I did, once I wised up to the prevalence of the issue. And what a variety of sources I found! From the straight copy-paste of a well-respected Buddhist philosopher’s essay on the nature of death to the multi-paragraph plundering of an emotional mid-western American teenager’s tumblr page to a seemingly random clip from the encyclopedia about Arctic vegetation, there seemed no limit to the pilfering prowess of these students.
One essay, written by a kid with a clearly Thai name, relayed a firsthand account of moving from the rural countryside to the big city. So far so good, I thought, until the essay informed me that the city was Nairobi, and that the so-called writer could speak only “Swahili and very little English.”
Hmmm.
A quick Google search informed me that the essay was in fact a free sample swiped directly from a UK-based essay writing service “designed to improve your grades, provide peace of mind and help you meet your deadlines.”
I ended up having to Google-search every essay in my potential winners pile, and was ultimately forced to throw out nearly a third of these potential winners due to plagiarism. Afterwards I was left wondering, is this really indicative of what Thai students are turning in these days?
As it turns out, it’s only the tip of the iceberg.