Cinnabar and Alabaster

framework: interviews & examinations of texts to evaluate the degree of & intentionality of textual overlap in the graduate-school writing of 17 british NNSE students--with lots of samples to look at instead of only read about! she chose NNSE b/c suspicion surrounds them anyway, & their struggles w/textual appropriation are likely to be more pronounced since they're working in unfamiliar languages & that takes more steps/more work--successive approximations ("learning a skill is rarely a straight line from input to mastery. the novice academic writer must crawl before being able to walk" (320)) will be more distinct & easier to distguish, but a whole conflation of studies & evidence insist that "cultural issues...cannot be the only factor at work" influencing the high degree of textual overlap their work exhibits.

how to set this sort of thing up (when your terms are doomed to indeterminacy): "because there is some question about what degree of inappropriateness will be received as plagiarism, it is useful to invert the question and ask whether a text is fully appropriate in its source use, and therefore beyond accusations of plagiarism" (324)

324. transparency = it's clear "whose voice is speaking": "means signaling the relationship between source and citing text accurately." "readers make a number of assumptions based on the principle of transparency. those which are related to plagiarism include the following:

1. that language which is not signaled as quotation is original to the writer
2. that if no citation is present, both the content and the form are original to the writer
3. that the writer consulted the source which is cited

330. "when experienced academic writers and readers 'collaborate' on a text, placing citations and interpreting them is not difficult. however, determining whether these less experienced writers had cited a source was not always straightfoward"
336. students in the study, all of whom failed to meet at least 1 (most all 3) transparency criterion, made "no attempt to conceal the nature of their source use"--they didn't know they were doing it wrong.
337. "cultural differences were not irrelevant to these writers, but...they were overshadowed by more relevant matters."
338. that "these students...were not experienced or confident writers...support[s] Howard's model of patchwriting, a form of textual plagiarism which is caused not by the intention to decieve but by the need for further growth as a writer."
339. some other problems: "ingrid's distinction between more and less original parts of a research article"--"they probably got it from someone else...i don't know where they got it from"--"presented [her] with a problem because she was aware that 'you're supposed to use the original source.' her solution was at times to cite the source she had consulted and at times to omit a citation"; but it's important to note that "her writing was guided by a set of principles more complex than 'it's okay to plagiarize'; she had expended some thought on what she was doing"
341. erden's note-taking: "you try to avoid" having copied too directly in a note, or having lost track of a quotation mark or two, but "when you are reading and taking a note, sometimes it is unavoidable," and going back through "hundreds of citations, hundreds of articles" to double-check, in "[his] position, it is impossible": there exists "a gap between ideal and realistic performance" (of course teaching him better note-taking strategies would help--but lecturing him about ethics would not)
342. "distinguishing between prototypical plagiarism and patchwriting is an important first step in addressing the issue": "first, patchwriting should be recognized as a widespread strategy, and efforts to address it should start with the understanding that most students will use sources inappropriately before they learn how to use them appropriately"; "secondly, patchwriting should be recognized as a neutral, rather than a stigmatizing error"; "conflating" the two has negative effects: "teachers who assume plagiarism is primarily an ethical issue are not likely to diagnose it in students they see as diligent and honest" and "the stigma creates an atmosphere of suspicion and concern whenever teachers raise questions about source use, and this is not conducive to the learning process."