Lecturers often tell students that they do not want to know their opinion. But when the student hands a piece of work in, the lecturers say things such as: you haven’t answered the question, you’ve only summarised facts, what are you trying to say? etc. We need to make a distinction between a student’s uniformed, unsubstantiated opinion and the conclusions that they themselves have come to from their reading and research, what we can call their voice. This must be made clear in their writing.

designed for an hour's class on plagiarism, this lecture introduces the concepts of plagiarism and Harvard/ APA referencing styles, the importance of correct referencing and most importantly: the use of an authentic authorial voice. This concept is introduced by giving three extracts from journals on fair trade, and a slide on the fair trade of chocolate, using the supplier Askinosie as an example. Students then discuss, critically evaluate, reflect and debate the concept of Fair Trade. When I tried this out on a group of first year undergraduates they performed very well at this task, and I was able to explain to them how they might use the extracts to inform and inspire discussion in their essays, and to avoid the common mistakes of summarising and paraphrasing too closely to the originals, so that they avoid patchworking in their essays.

a guide for writing research proposals for postgraduate international students of business.

1 - Using Literature in Your Writing: Avoid Plagiarism by using your Authentic Voice and an Effective Narrative Understand what plagiarism is, the importance of avoiding it; how to find your own 'voice' in your writing, how paraphrasing, summarising and synthesising are used; also where to find journals for your essays and finally how to reference those materials the easy way. This video will help you to avoid plagiarism when writing essays at University, by showing you what plagiarism is, how to reference, and the importance of developing your 'voice' and the practice of building a narrative into your text. Videos to follow this will develop the idea of a 'stance' taken in your argument, and the importance of playing fair, but playing to win.

the video explains feedback given for an academic English essay written by a student. The pre- feedback presentation provides theory to help with this feedback, and the post- feedback presentation provides tasks that the student could do to improve in the areas identified.

This checklist can be used in class or individually for reflecting on the different stages involved in producing good academic written work