Most colleges and universities in the United States have established
honor codes or statements of rules students are expected to follow
in their academic work. These rules relate primarily to academic
honesty and originality as they are defined by U.S. educational
institutions. Many international students have discovered that U.S.
academic rules are much different from the ones they followed at
home.
U.S. educational institutions take these rules very seriously, and
ignorance of the rules usually is not accepted as an excuse for
breaking them. Even if a particular academic practice is accepted in
your country or is part of your culture, it will not be an
acceptable explanation for violating the rules at a U.S. college or
university.
The university honor code, or the university code of conduct, is
usually distributed to new students at the very beginning of the
semester and is frequently a topic for discussion during new student
orientation.
If you have any questions about what to do regarding any of these
issues, talk to your instructor, your academic adviser, or the
international student adviser. There is a U.S. idiom that applies
here: "It is better to be safe than sorry." |
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Cheating is considered to be a failure of honesty in U.S. colleges
and universities. It means getting unauthorized help on an
assignment, quiz, or examination. You must not receive from anyone,
nor give to anyone, any information, answers, or help during an
examination or any kind of test. You must not take notes or books to
the examination if this is forbidden, and you must not refer to any
books or notes while you are taking the test unless you are
instructed otherwise. Sometimes students who speak a foreign
language during an examination are perceived by others to be
cheating, even though they may simply be asking a fellow student in
their native language for a piece of paper or an eraser. You should
be aware of this and try to avoid suspicion.
Plagiarism is another kind of cheating. It is the failure to do your
own original work in written assignments. Instead, you use someone
else's words or ideas as though they were your own, without
crediting the source. Plagiarism is considered literary and
intellectual theft and is vigorously condemned in academic work.
When quoting words or ideas from books, magazines, websites,
recordings, films, or other sources of information, always make sure
you give appropriate credit to the author in your text. Many U.S.
universities have specific guidelines to follow when quoting an
author and some of them publish guides for papers. Make sure you are
aware of the university policies on quoting words and ideas to avoid
being accused of plagiarism. |
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