As of the second-last week of the trimester, indeed, the lecture was interesting. We continued another five more contemporary ethical issues that are present in our society today. The lecture included: torture, humanitarian intervention, corruption, plagiarism and divorce. In this case I would like to reflect concerning corruption and plagiarism.
Corruption is a state of being spiritually and morally unclean. It is an abuse of assigned power for personal gain. Corruption has many forms including impurity activities such as bribery, stealing someone’s property and fraud. When talking about corruption, the ideas that come to my mind are the government officials in my own country. We cannot deny the fact that all of the countries are facing this problem which prevents the country to develop. Corruption is really bad; the country won’t reach anything if the government officials are corrupt and only think of their own benefits. People should fight against corruption but the question is how?
In my opinion, the first thing to do is to understand what is corruption all about, why people are doing it, and if possible how we can prevent it. To me, we can use media as a tool to fight corruption. In today’s generation, there is no justice if people cannot see what is exactly happening around them. Media fulfills the first act of justice by helping people to see what occurs in any other society. Media can provide understanding and alertness of the negative impact on society and its one way to solve corruption.
The second topic that I would like to reflect is about plagiarism. It is the use of another person’s written work without acknowledging its source. In other word, copy and pasting someone else’s ideas and assumed it is your own work. In many universities, this act is very serious and students who are caught plagiarizing will be suspended from class and to some extent expelled from the university.
As a student, to prevent plagiarism you must trust and believe in yourself. Do your task on your own and ask help from the lecturer or colleagues if you don’t understand. In addition, learn how to summarize, paraphrase and cite sources. In this case you are safe from plagiarizing. Furthermore, think before you act. Think whether plagiarizing will help your studies or ruin your good reputation. To me, doesn’t matter what marks I will get as long as I did it by myself rather than stealing someone’s ideas in order to get high marks.
Prepared by: Wai Wai Ko
Comments