{"id":110,"date":"2023-07-17T21:20:40","date_gmt":"2023-07-18T01:20:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/?post_type=part&p=110"},"modified":"2025-06-13T14:07:19","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T18:07:19","slug":"writing-with-help-what-is-and-isnt-ok","status":"publish","type":"part","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/part\/writing-with-help-what-is-and-isnt-ok\/","title":{"raw":"Writing With Help: What Is and Isn\u2019t OK?","rendered":"Writing With Help: What Is and Isn\u2019t OK?"},"content":{"raw":"

Joel Heng Hartse<\/a><\/p>\r\n

Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nAbstract:<\/strong> Research shows that university students and professors have different understandings of what counts as \u201ccheating\u201d and what doesn\u2019t. We are told throughout our education to \u201cuse our own words,\u201d but does that mean we can\u2019t get any help on our work whatsoever? The answer is, frustratingly, \u201cit depends.\u201d This chapter explores the different sources of academic help and support that may be offered during the course of undergraduate studies, from school-related supports like writing centre consultations and peer tutoring, to private or paid services like language tutoring or proofreading, to the darker side of online companies that offer to \u201chelp\u201d students in need but actually do the work for them (for a hefty fee, of course). This chapter offers practical solutions to help students distinguish acceptable collaboration, tutoring, and \u201cwriting help\u201d from practices that are more likely to be illicit and counterproductive to both academic integrity and learning in general.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
<\/div>\r\nI\u2019ve always loved writing. Over the course of my life, I\u2019ve written stories, poems, academic papers, music reviews, love letters, newspaper feature stories, personal essays, research articles, books, and thousands and thousands of emails. If you asked me who wrote all that stuff, I\u2019d say: \u201cI did.\u201d Me and no one else, usually while sitting in a room alone, just me and a blank page or computer screen. As an academic writing teacher, I try to help my students learn how to shape their ideas in a way that\u2019s acceptable in a university setting, and I expect them to do their own, original work.\r\n\r\nBut the fact is, if I think a little more about it, I realize that everybody gets help with writing. My mom used to write down my stories before I could even spell, which is probably why I thought of myself as a writer from a young age. My books have editors. My articles are peer reviewed. And if I think a little more, I can remember many times in my life when I\u2019ve witnessed (or participated in) situations like the ones I\u2019ve described below:\r\n

Scenario 1<\/strong><\/h1>\r\nIn my second year of high school, I was frustrated with a paper I was writing for my English class. I explained to my mother what I thought I wanted to say, but that I was having trouble putting it into a sentence. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you just write that?\u201d she said. \u201cJust say\u2026\u201d and then she repeated my idea back to me \u2013 not in my exact words, but in a new, simpler, easier-to-understand way. I wrote down her words \u2013 or were they mine? Either way, I felt better about my paper.\r\n

Scenario 2<\/strong><\/h1>\r\nI once travelled to the university where I did my undergraduate degree to give a reading from my first book. I went to see if I could run into one of my favorite professors, but found he was in the middle of a conference with a student. I could just overhear them discussing her paper on Thucydides\u2019 History of the Peloponnesian War, which I vaguely remembered reading and writing about when I was in his class. \u201cPerhaps what this paper is really about,\u201d he said, \u201cis\u2026\u201d and he proceeded to very gently, but convincingly, suggest a new thesis statement for her paper.\r\n

Scenario 3<\/strong><\/h1>\r\n\u201cI don\u2019t know how to start the sentence!\u201d my eight-year-old son whined to me as he attempted to complete another at-home writing assignment now that he was doing most of his schoolwork at home due to COVID. \u201cI know you know how to do this,\u201d I said, trying to be encouraging but probably sounding annoyed. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you just start with\u2026\u201d and I gave him the first four or five words of a sentence for his assignment.\r\n\r\nThese are just a few typical scenarios, of course. We often think of the writer as a \u201clone genius,\u201d maybe embodying a mythical archetypal figure sitting alone at a typewriter, smoking a cigarette, and sipping whiskey, pounding out the Great American (or Canadian) Novel.\r\n\r\nIn reality, though, it doesn\u2019t look like that. In fact, almost any literacy activity we take part in is never done in isolation: As the Russian literary critic Mikahil Bakhtin (1986) wrote, none of us is \u201cthe first speaker, who disturbs the silence of the universe\u201d (p. 69). In a way, everything we do is a response to input that we get \u2013 all our communication, even if it\u2019s just doing a short writing assignment for a class, is \u201cinteractive\u201d in this sense.\r\n\r\nAnd in many other ways, the academic work we do in universities is collaborative \u2013 group projects, study groups, sharing notes, quizzing each other in preparation for exams.\r\n\r\nBut most universities also have policies about academic integrity that make it clear you must \u201cdo your own work.\u201d My own university has rules that disallow various forms of getting too much help on your academic work, even disallowing things such as \u201csharing information\u201d and \u201cuse of an editor\u201d in some situations \u2013 things that I, and almost everyone involved in academia, do all the time!\r\n\r\nYour professor puts you into groups, but you have to submit \u201coriginal work.\u201d Your writing teacher wants you to peer review papers in class, but doesn\u2019t let you pay an editor to proofread your grammar. This can seem contradictory and confusing. What\u2019s going on?","rendered":"

Joel Heng Hartse<\/a><\/p>\n

Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Abstract:<\/strong> Research shows that university students and professors have different understandings of what counts as \u201ccheating\u201d and what doesn\u2019t. We are told throughout our education to \u201cuse our own words,\u201d but does that mean we can\u2019t get any help on our work whatsoever? The answer is, frustratingly, \u201cit depends.\u201d This chapter explores the different sources of academic help and support that may be offered during the course of undergraduate studies, from school-related supports like writing centre consultations and peer tutoring, to private or paid services like language tutoring or proofreading, to the darker side of online companies that offer to \u201chelp\u201d students in need but actually do the work for them (for a hefty fee, of course). This chapter offers practical solutions to help students distinguish acceptable collaboration, tutoring, and \u201cwriting help\u201d from practices that are more likely to be illicit and counterproductive to both academic integrity and learning in general.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

I\u2019ve always loved writing. Over the course of my life, I\u2019ve written stories, poems, academic papers, music reviews, love letters, newspaper feature stories, personal essays, research articles, books, and thousands and thousands of emails. If you asked me who wrote all that stuff, I\u2019d say: \u201cI did.\u201d Me and no one else, usually while sitting in a room alone, just me and a blank page or computer screen. As an academic writing teacher, I try to help my students learn how to shape their ideas in a way that\u2019s acceptable in a university setting, and I expect them to do their own, original work.<\/p>\n

But the fact is, if I think a little more about it, I realize that everybody gets help with writing. My mom used to write down my stories before I could even spell, which is probably why I thought of myself as a writer from a young age. My books have editors. My articles are peer reviewed. And if I think a little more, I can remember many times in my life when I\u2019ve witnessed (or participated in) situations like the ones I\u2019ve described below:<\/p>\n

Scenario 1<\/strong><\/h1>\n

In my second year of high school, I was frustrated with a paper I was writing for my English class. I explained to my mother what I thought I wanted to say, but that I was having trouble putting it into a sentence. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you just write that?\u201d she said. \u201cJust say\u2026\u201d and then she repeated my idea back to me \u2013 not in my exact words, but in a new, simpler, easier-to-understand way. I wrote down her words \u2013 or were they mine? Either way, I felt better about my paper.<\/p>\n

Scenario 2<\/strong><\/h1>\n

I once travelled to the university where I did my undergraduate degree to give a reading from my first book. I went to see if I could run into one of my favorite professors, but found he was in the middle of a conference with a student. I could just overhear them discussing her paper on Thucydides\u2019 History of the Peloponnesian War, which I vaguely remembered reading and writing about when I was in his class. \u201cPerhaps what this paper is really about,\u201d he said, \u201cis\u2026\u201d and he proceeded to very gently, but convincingly, suggest a new thesis statement for her paper.<\/p>\n

Scenario 3<\/strong><\/h1>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how to start the sentence!\u201d my eight-year-old son whined to me as he attempted to complete another at-home writing assignment now that he was doing most of his schoolwork at home due to COVID. \u201cI know you know how to do this,\u201d I said, trying to be encouraging but probably sounding annoyed. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you just start with\u2026\u201d and I gave him the first four or five words of a sentence for his assignment.<\/p>\n

These are just a few typical scenarios, of course. We often think of the writer as a \u201clone genius,\u201d maybe embodying a mythical archetypal figure sitting alone at a typewriter, smoking a cigarette, and sipping whiskey, pounding out the Great American (or Canadian) Novel.<\/p>\n

In reality, though, it doesn\u2019t look like that. In fact, almost any literacy activity we take part in is never done in isolation: As the Russian literary critic Mikahil Bakhtin (1986) wrote, none of us is \u201cthe first speaker, who disturbs the silence of the universe\u201d (p. 69). In a way, everything we do is a response to input that we get \u2013 all our communication, even if it\u2019s just doing a short writing assignment for a class, is \u201cinteractive\u201d in this sense.<\/p>\n

And in many other ways, the academic work we do in universities is collaborative \u2013 group projects, study groups, sharing notes, quizzing each other in preparation for exams.<\/p>\n

But most universities also have policies about academic integrity that make it clear you must \u201cdo your own work.\u201d My own university has rules that disallow various forms of getting too much help on your academic work, even disallowing things such as \u201csharing information\u201d and \u201cuse of an editor\u201d in some situations \u2013 things that I, and almost everyone involved in academia, do all the time!<\/p>\n

Your professor puts you into groups, but you have to submit \u201coriginal work.\u201d Your writing teacher wants you to peer review papers in class, but doesn\u2019t let you pay an editor to proofread your grammar. This can seem contradictory and confusing. What\u2019s going on?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"parent":0,"menu_order":4,"template":"","meta":{"pb_part_invisible":false,"pb_part_invisible_string":""},"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-110","part","type-part","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/part"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":525,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/110\/revisions\/525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=110"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/ubcacademicintegrity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}