Ethical: How to Avoid Cheating on Essay Writing

By Davedtc @davedtc

Academic writing assignments are possibly the most challenging aspect of education.

When you look at an entire class, you can identify only a few students who don't have a problem with essays. All others would most likely avoid the struggle imposed by the process of research, writing, referencing, and endless editing.

Students can justify their cheating habits with multiple reasons:
* Their teachers don't give enough instructions and don't provide support during the process of completion
* There are too many essays to write
* The topics are boring
*There's no time for writing, since the student has to attend classes, work, and study for exams

All these arguments are valid. But you know what? They can't justify cheating.

What Is Cheating in Academic Writing?
The official term for cheating is academic dishonesty.

The definition has several aspects to it:
* Copying the work from another student. It may be a classmate whose paper you've read. Maybe it's the work of a student from previous generations, who gave the essay to you.
* Getting another person to write the paper for you. It may be a fellow student, but it's usually a professional ghostwriter, who you can hire online.
* Copying content from available materials, such as online resources (usually Wikipedia as the most obvious source of information), textbooks, or someone else's notes.
These aspects of cheating are most commonly attached to academic writing. However, students find other ways to trick the system:
* Bribing professors with goods, money, or services. Unfortunately, bribery is still a common practice, no matter how much universities try to regulate it. In exchange for money or any service, the professor will give a good grade even if the student skipped submitting the paper.
* Submitting the same paper for two different classes is also not allowed. It's considered a form of plagiarism.

The first step towards avoiding cheating is understanding it.

Using available resources is not cheating, as long as you don't paraphrase and steal their ideas.

Tips: How to Avoid Cheating When Writing Essays

Do you want to be an honest student?

Even if everyone around you is cheating, you still benefit a lot by making your own efforts to earn good grades:
* You'll learn only by trying. Cheating doesn't teach you to write good essays. Practice does. Use the opportunity to practice whenever your professors assign a paper.
* Even if you get a lower grade than the student who bought a paper online, it's still yours. You should be proud of it. You'll learn from that experience. You'll go through the teacher's notes, so you'll know what to improve next time. Remember: a single essay doesn't form the final grade. You'll have tons of space for improvement.
* It's not about the grades. It's about learning. The assignment gives you an opportunity to learn about a particular topic, and develop writing skills along the way. The student who purchases an assignment may get a better grade, but they will deprive themselves from the experience. They won't learn anything.
* The only difference is when you rely on a team of research paper writers to teach you how to handle the projects. Instead of asking a writer to complete the entire paper, get engaged in a process of collaboration. Ask them about anything you want to know. This will help you distinguish outstanding from average writing.
Follow these tips if you decide to write your own essays and you want to avoid cheating at any cost:

1. Don't Rewrite/Paraphrase
Paraphrasing is the easiest way for students to "write" papers. They will find a few online resources and rewrite different paragraphs to create an essay that would avoid being detected by plagiarism search engines.

This is still cheating!

Your professors can easily recognize the ideas and arguments that you stole from an easily available source.

Some topics are more challenging than others. In that case, you can find homework helper to assist in the creation of a unique paper. It's the same thing as hiring a tutor when you're stuck with the studying material.

2. Always Check for Plagiarism
Even if you don't paraphrase, you're still at risk to get "too inspired" by an online source. Use an online plagiarism detection tool to make sure the paper is okay before you submit it.

If the tool identifies plagiarism, make sure to reference the source you used. When you indicate that the particular argument is from a source, your paper is not technically plagiarized.

3. Rely on Your Unique Ideas
Before you start writing, brainstorm! Discover your own ideas. You are allowed to use resources to prove your arguments. However, your main idea has to be unique, and you have to reference each source of information that you use.

If you're having a hard time getting inspired, try XMind or another brainstorming tool. It will inspire you to get creative and note down any idea that comes to your mind. Then, you'll choose the best one.

Ethical Academic Writing Is So Worth the Effort
"Everyone is cheating, so why should I be honest? My professors can't tell if I buy the paper online."
That's true. If you hire professional ghostwriters who craft content by your instructions, your professor will hardly suspect that you cheated. But is that the right thing to do?

Students should strive towards learning; not towards grades. If you make enough effort to write a good paper, you will not fail. Start on time, find a unique angle that awakens your interest in the topic, and do your research. Then, write the paper according to your outline, and you'll make it. It will be great!
The satisfaction you'll get with a good grade on your own content is priceless.

Keywords: Robert Everett wants to inspire people to write more. Writing is not such an intimidating task. If you just follow the tips and your intuition, you'll have a paper in no time. Follow Jeremy on Twitter to get the insights.