After receiving feedback from this assignment, it was brought to my attention that I continued to struggle with source boundaries and providing clear in-text citations. Going back to revise this assignment, I realized that in incorporating information from a source, including paraphrases, it is important to provide a parenthetical citation at the end. These parenthetical citations signal the shift from source information to your own analysis and give credit to the author. This plagiarism assignment highlighted my poor citation use, but also recognized my growth in introducing sources, although I had a lot “bonus” signal phrases.
Once again, my citation usage was the focus of my revision process, particularly, source boundaries. Throughout my paper, it was unclear as to where the source information ended and where my analysis began. I figured that it worked best if I revisited each source and figured out the information that belonged to the source and then separated it from my analysis with a citation. I also added a page number to the citation of the The New York Times article by Amanda Taub, after realizing that most newspaper publications usually have page numbers. I repeated the same process for each highlighted section and revised some sentences to make the transition between my analysis and the source material effortless.
This assignment, prior to the plagiarism checker, introduced me to the idea of fake news and how it influences American’s political and social lives. After the plagiarism checker, this assignment taught me that having an understanding of source use and being able to identify your own mistakes is a tool every writer should have. Being that all plagiarism checkers aren’t always 100% reliable.