Speaker 1: Okay, what's up smart students? Welcome to today's video. Actually, welcome to this series, shall I say, where we're talking all about paraphrasing. Previous video, we learned the six different types of plagiarism. Now what I need to do is tell you guys the most common mistakes people make, intentionally or not, when it comes to plagiarizing. And then I'm going to give you my three, four, I don't remember how many, but I have a number of surefire tips and tricks, strategies that are going to help you avoid plagiarism every single time. Let's see if I can slide out of here a little better. Let's go. All right, so let's start with the mistakes. Mistake number one is probably the most common, and that is not paraphrasing correctly, but including in the video. In text citation and considering yourself safe. So here's the thing. If you don't paraphrase correctly, even if you include a citation, it's going to be considered plagiarized material. Now, mistake number two, you understand mistake number one, and you're trying to paraphrase correctly. A mistake you might make here is only reading the immediate passage and then trying to paraphrase that topic. So for example, let's say you're trying to talk about what a customer relationship management system is, a CRM system is. And so you just read the definitional paragraph about it, and then you go try and talk about what it is in your paper. Guess what? You're going to have a really hard time writing a paraphrase passage about what a CRM is. It's kind of important that you understand who it's for, how it's used, what it's made up of. So don't be afraid to read around just the portion that you're trying to paraphrase. Go ahead and increase your understanding of the topic, because that's going to ensure that you paraphrase. correctly. But now, mistake number three, let's say you don't have time to read extra material, and you kind of just need to get the material down on your paper right now. Here's a mistake that a lot of students make, and that is using a thesaurus to intentionally change a few of the words and then considering themselves safe. So I actually recommend using a thesaurus when you're paraphrasing, but you still need to change the wording of the entire sentence. You can't just try and pass it off as your own idea, because quite frankly, you're still just using that sources material. Now it's just a little bit different. So that is still going to be considered plagiarism. But now the final common mistake that students make when it comes to plagiarism is changing the original meaning of the source. So I don't mean changing the entire thing generally, but you tweak it a little bit. So for example, you read an article, it is almost a slam dunk for what it is. So say you fib the results a little bit, or you fib the, I don't know, the demographics they're talking about. Whatever the case may be, you change it just a little bit so that it better fits your paper or better suits your needs. Again, this is a mistake because in order to use that original sources, ideas, thoughts in your paper, you can't change what they wrote about in theirs. You do need to paraphrase it, but you can't change the meaning, if that makes sense. But now, let's go back to the original sources. Let's go back to the original sources. Let's go back to the original sources. Let's go back to the original sources. Let's go back to the original sources. Let's go back to the original sources. Let's go back to the original sources. Let's go back to the original sources. Let's go ahead and talk about those actionable things you can do to avoid plagiarism. Starting with the first one, and that is paraphrasing or directly quoting correctly. Now, here's the thing, I didn't start with this because I'm sure if you're watching this video, you already kind of know that you need to paraphrase. So it's kind of common knowledge but it's worth reiterating here because it's important that you understand that you have to do that correctly. That is the number one safe way that you'll avoid plagiarism. And I already kind of touched on this in the mistakes, but it's worth mentioning here in order to paraphrase correctly to avoid plagiarism. One of the best things you can do is to always improve your understanding of what you're trying to paraphrase. I say this time and time again, but if you feel like you're struggling, you know, that feeling of, I kind of understand what I'm supposed to say. I'm trying to paraphrase it on paper, but it's just not working. It's because you don't understand the topic you're trying to paraphrase. Think about something you know a lot about. How easy is it for you to talk about versus something you don't know anything about? It's really hard for your brain to formalize words. And so researching is no different. Effective research is about improving your understanding because that's how you're going to translate it from your mind down onto that piece of paper. But let's go ahead and move on to the next tip, which is to keep track of your sources. This is going to depend on what you're trying to paraphrase. So if you're trying to paraphrase something, you're trying to keep track of how advanced you are on paraphrasing or even how complex your assignment is. So a lot of times, if you're doing a lot of research and you're reading through tons and tons of articles in sources, sometimes it's best to go ahead and keep researching, keep reading, but keep track of your sources. So that way, when you are writing your paper later, you know exactly what came from where, because if you cite the wrong source in the wrong place, it doesn't matter. It's still plagiarism. And as I've said before, intentional or unintentional, the punishment is still the same. So keep track of your sources, cover your bases. That's key. Now, the next tip I'd like to offer you is actually from my own personal toolbox. I like to call it cite as you write. And so basically what this is, is as you're researching, you're writing your paper simultaneously. And this is what I did for every single paper. So you have a list of objectives you're trying to fulfill. I would put it in the description box below. And then I would put it in the description box below. And then I would focus on the first one. I would research, I would write it, I would cite it. And then I'd move on to the next one and the next one and the next one. And so this is something that I will say, if you're not used to doing, let's say you research your paper in its entirety, and then you go back and write, it may take a little bit of, or a little bit of transitional period to cite as you write. But this is something that I try and teach students because I find it's very effective. If I write a piece of paraphrased material, I put that citation immediately in my paper, the reference list entry included, because that's going to save me time later on. By the way, let me know if you'd be interested in a video on that. Simply how I used to research and write a paper. A lot of people, we all use different methods. And so sometimes it helps to see how someone else does it to realize that your system maybe could be a little more efficient. And so let me know if you want to see that. Anyways, moving on to the last strategy you can use to avoid a paper that you don't want to cite. So let me know if you want to see that. So the first one is to avoid plagiarism. And that is to use a plagiarism checker. So there are software systems online that you can quite literally run your papers through to see how high your paper scores on the plagiarism scale. Spoiler, but your professor is going to do the same thing later when they grade you. Because quite frankly, when they do mark you off for plagiarism, they're not trying to be hard on you. It's that they generally run your papers through the plagiarism checker. So if you're a plagiarist, you're going to want to use a plagiarism checker. And if it scores too high, they have to count you off, there's there's really nothing they can do. And so as a rule of thumb, I always say you want to keep your plagiarism score in the single digits. So in other words, when you get to 10 and higher, you want to start fixing some problems, you want to go back and see what you did incorrectly. Underneath that is fine. Because quite frankly, there's always going to be a little form of plagiarism in all papers, or at least a plagiarism checker is going to find some. So keep in mind that it's okay in the single digits, double digits, you need to fix some stuff. And here we are, if I could summarize this entire video in one sentence or a phrase, it would be this, guys, use a plagiarism checker when you're getting used to paraphrasing, use a plagiarism checker, it will help you. But anyways, thanks so much for watching this video all the way through. And by the way, YouTube has this awesome new feature called YouTube Thanks, which allows you guys to support your creators, let them know what videos you like, which ones you're learning the most from what type of videos you want more from whatever the case may be. You can find that down where you like the video, subscribe, all that good stuff, which you should do while you're out while you're down there if you haven't already too. But anyways, guys, I will see you in the next video.