Borrowing Others’ Words:Text, Ownership, Memory,and Plagiarism by ALASTAIR PENNYCOOK

Quoting a story of borrowing texts the writer has encountered while teaching in China, the writer analysizes the text ownership, momory, and palgiarism from various historical background, namely Premodern, modern, and postmodern understandings of text, and authorship. Along with the confusion, ambiguitym and hypocrisies over plagiarism existing in different culture, the writer suggests that we should show more appreciation of the relationship between different approaches to texts.(PP.201)

From the ancient time to modern era, Chinese students have been taught to memorize the articles/poems that have enlightening and educative theories behind them. The scene of a bunch of kids memorizing Confucius’s, a great Chinese philosopher that has influenced eastern Asian deeply, analects is a positive expression of diligent and up-and-coming learners. As the writer points out, the memorization is not a pointless practice. “Memorization through repetition can be used to deepen and develop understanding.”(PP.222) There’s no doubt that memorizing does play a crucial role in Chinese education through which we have fostered a great many poets, educators, and artists and developed creativity, the critical thinking ability etc.

From my point of view, it is probably this practice that misguide students to copy from other writers. As I recall, when I initially started to take writing class in elementary school, my teacher told us to memorize these articles and developed a good habit of writing down every good sentence and good vocabulary you’ve come acrossed and apply them in your writing, which is a good way to beautify/improve your essays. Unsurprisingly, teachers will find many students have the same conclusion of a journal response to a patriotic movies or a visit to a zoo. As we moved to a high school and college, then we progressed with those good sentence and vocabularies and improved our writing skills over time. I don’t think there’s something wrong with this. No one is a natural-born great writer, and millions of original ideas will not jump out at anytime and anywhere. I agree with the writer who claims that it is important to distinguish the good plagiarism and bad plagiarism.

With the conclusion of language learning is to some extent a process of borrowing others’ words and we need to be flexible, not dogmatic, about where we draw boundaries between acceptable or unacceptable textual borrowings.”(PP.227) I believe this article will change people’s attitudes towards students’ “plagiarism” in particular culture.