Читать книгу How to Write Brilliant Psychology Essays - Paul Dickerson - Страница 76

In a famous scene from the US sitcom Friends (www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1tOqZUNebs), Joey tries to make his letter of recommendation sound ‘smart’ by using a thesaurus to substitute words. Using this technique, his original sentence ‘They are warm, nice people with big hearts’ becomes ‘They are human prepossessing homo sapiens with full-sized aortic pumps’. It’s unlikely that you would use any form of word substitution quite so blindly, but it is amazing how often intelligent people use word substitution to ‘make it their own’ – or at least to look like it’s their own. One problem with taking someone else’s writing and substituting words within it is that plagiarism software will detect word matches even if there are word substitutions sprinkled throughout the passage. If you change too many individual words within the original sentence structure, your writing will look odd – nearly as odd as referring to people as having ‘full-sized aortic pumps’. Fundamentally, swapping words in other people’s writing means that you are cheating yourself out of something really remarkably precious – the opportunity to think, to think about a discipline that you are interested in. Why not give up on word substitution scams – they don’t convince anyone – and instead really make it your own? Table 2.6 provides some suggestions for overcoming the main obstacles to making it your own.

Table 2.6

Use the examples below to get a sense of how you can make the source material that you come across your own. For the two examples provided, look at the target passage and then at the attempts of the authors to make it their own. Attempt one relies on swapping words, which is one of the most common ways in which people try, and fail, to make source material their own, whereas attempt two really engages with the ideas.